The Insurgent Jesus Caricatures
The Insurgent, a student newspaper at the University of Oregon, has what I hope to be the final say in this idiotic orgy of cartoon madness. I am only posting this because I have done so with all the other cartoons. Quite frankly, I am bored with this whole issue and I never expected it would come as far as it has. So without further ado, I present you a few of the Jesus caricatures as seen in the March-April issue of the Insurgent. The entire issue can be downloaded here.
May 21st, 2006 at 11:23 am
Reality is alive and well at UO’s Insurgent paper.
Congratulations, and thanks to Bill O’Reilly I might never had seen the controversy!
May 25th, 2006 at 6:04 am
Oh my god. Jesus!..w..with a p…peNIS!!!? That does it, damn you liberals!
June 1st, 2006 at 5:26 pm
SÄ°ZÄ°N KENDI ULKENIZDEKI DINE VE Ä°SAYA SAYGINIZ YOKKI ISLAMA
SAYGINIZ OLSUN
June 1st, 2006 at 5:31 pm
LA HARBI OROSPU ÇOCUGUYMUSSUNUZ SIZ HARBI BAK BAKIN SIZI RENCIDE ETMEK GIBI OLMASINDA LA ANANI KERANEDE ÇALISIYOMUS OYLE MI
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:05 am
you’ll regret this! damn you and damn your insane pictures
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:09 am
you are the damest people on earth so you think that you religion is better idiot losersssssss you are really damn
June 3rd, 2007 at 9:13 pm
HAHAHA stupid christians need to take a dose of their own medicine its about damn time
June 21st, 2007 at 4:32 pm
you’ll regret this! damn you and damn your insane pictures
du anijyal es, du amena hetamnas khozen es
June 21st, 2007 at 4:44 pm
my friend he is not Jesus. it is mohamad the rasul of allah. and you, are you a man? no you are a shett moslem, a dog and …
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:56 am
ahh, leave it to religion to bring out the worst in people.
June 28th, 2007 at 4:36 am
OMG Ur going to rot..rot in the grounf…and Jesus never did ANYTHING bad to US all he ever did was Help up and love us..
July 20th, 2007 at 4:31 am
This isn’t free speech or liberal tolerance or just deserts on Christians. This is a bunch of adolescents thinking how clever they are that they have tipped over another sacred cow.
Wouldn’t it be really cool to say something mean about Buddha, Gandhi or Mother Theresa. Wow. Radical. Personally, I stopped drawing willies on my cartoons by the time I was taught joined-up-writing.
I am left asking what this achieves.
Should it turn out that Jesus Christ really does sit on the heavenly judgment seat, will the various cartoonists look him in the eye and say “yes, it was a stand worth taking”?
I have my doubts.
August 18th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
pogiroto tokou kotumbayaan tokou kumaa doid kinorohingan
August 21st, 2007 at 10:35 am
this is the god of the person tat drew it.don use this to mess with us,we are not as insane as u & mess with insane ppl
August 21st, 2007 at 10:52 am
u r really retarded & u r born to throw ur religion’s face cause this shows that ur religion teach u to do all these stuff that makes u think that u & ur religion r cool & the best.or u think that it is very fun to make us angry?the more we angry the more u feel good & thinks that we are stupid?i dont give a damn on what u thinking.well,we r not that retard but laughing to death here to talk wit insane ppl…will u b curse?hell yeah!
August 21st, 2007 at 11:24 am
oh ya forget to say that even worst curse on anyone that support this…wad a useless loser worst religion that jealous others religion?sensitive?but love to disrupt others religion & harm others that out of ur religion?& hm…wad else…?well,no choice…too free…closed minded?cant get along & respect others?i bet this religion will be the most **** religion with all the most evil curse especially on the followers & supporter….??ok…i m bored of sending comment.
August 21st, 2007 at 11:36 am
oh ya forget to say that even worst curse on anyone that support this…wad a useless loser worst religion that jealous others religion?sensitive?love to disrupt others religion & harm others that out of ur religion?& hm…wad else…?well,no choice…too free…closed minded?cant get along & respect others?i bet this religion have all the most evil curse especially on the followers & supporter…erm…cay i ask…is ur god really naked as above & copy cat to use our cross…?this is wad he want all his followers to do so?lol! imagine IF we r as closed minded as u?have wars with bom?who will b the one being step under the feet?…o ya i m sorry to forget that u r brainless ok…i m bored of sending comment now.what an entertainment to spend my time
October 31st, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Wtf…..??????????? what the hell guys put some good pictures
October 31st, 2007 at 7:51 pm
omg!!!!! damn christions you guys are insane
November 7th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
dont ever call jesus again or ill come here an kick the sht
out of u all…. ya hear me punks!
god damn dicks!
November 7th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Howdy all,
“dont ever call jesus again or ill come here an kick the sht
out of u all…. ya hear me punks!”
I would just like to know exactly how you intend to accomplish this?
Cheers
Simon Bond
November 30th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
u know what, yep, i reckon jesus had a dick, he was a guy, but come-on, little respect here - he came just to love and protect you - you don’t need to sexulize everything!!!
December 10th, 2007 at 9:56 am
I am so insulted by these!!!! I would think that if jesus had a penis that it would be huge!!!! Much larger then the samll one given to him in the cartoon, In the book of Job he is referred to as tri-pod… get it tripod? His shlong is so big he is called tri-pod!!!!! HAHAHAHAHA
December 10th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Hehe, from the last couple of posts it shows that some christians have just as little sense of humor as muslims do.
To bad there’s no rioting in the streets though, I wonder how governments would have responded to that.
March 25th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
gay silly shit
April 7th, 2008 at 5:34 am
i wonder if the cartoonists really understand the messages they spreadind about their so called lord. Oh no! it is not surprising because they are fool that follow man-made religion
April 7th, 2008 at 10:57 am
I don’t think these cartoons were made by Christians. In fact, i’m quite sure of it.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
you know what guys. honestly. the world is just so corrupted with lies, sex, murder. if you think christians are really not cursed and evil and jelous over other religions. well think again. i mean if there is a heaven then there is a hell. if there is a god. there is a devil. if there is a father of life then there is a father of death.
juss remember its not about religion. its about a relationship. its not about goin to church every sunday and then thas it for the week. its about being consistant of having to pray and beleiving on what you say, and saying what you believe.
faith is what we christians do live by. and we do struggle everyday to live a pure life. but like i said. we are so tempted by the devil to do stupid and bad things. like i mean being a christian by itself is a hard job. because like i said. there is an enemy. and he will do everything it takes to bring us down with him.
when you know something is wrong, yet you do it. its call sin. sure it might “pleasure” you for a temporary time. but there is no limit of consequences. trust me.
let me know when you start experiencing these corrupted days on what you guys say and what you guys do.
Godbless you all.
please believe that he will set you on high. on anything that you struggle on. careers , family, relationships,
he is the answer to every problem!!!!
April 25th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Jay, lots of problems with your post 28, but just to look at a few of them:
“i mean if there is a heaven then there is a hell. if there is a god. there is a devil. if there is a father of life then there is a father of death.”
Care to explain how even one of your three conclusions follows logically from its accompanying preposition as stated?
However, when you say
“i mean being a christian by itself is a hard job.”,
that I think is a statement that is easy to agree with. I mean, given the many and varied interpretations of christianity, and all the self-contradictions of the bible, and the inconsistencies between christian dogma and observable reality, not to mention the lack of any verifiable evidence, indeed it must be difficult.
May 30th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
I found them entertaining. I would really enjoy seeing more caricatures of individuals who have been put up on a pedestal. It humanizes them. After all, if your God didn’t intend for us to have a sense of humor he wouldn’t have given us one. If he is all knowing, then he knew before he gave it to us what we would do with it. Why would he punish us for what he knew we’d do before he gave us the ability to do it? Why would he not punish himself for it. We see in the modern day court system that it is not the dog’s fault for attacking but the master’s for teaching the dog to attack.
May 30th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
I forgot one point. For those of you who say Jesus teaches love, I would point out that he also teaches the systematic destruction of culture counter to the Judo-Christian. Isn’t it the assignment of every Christian to spread the Word of God? And in spreading that Word you supersede the founding beliefs of the culture you are infecting. How’s that for love?
May 30th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Marc –
Exactly. I am reminded of the Boxer Rebellion in China. Here is a culture that is vastly older than most others (they claim the oldest, but that is arguable) which exist today. Mostly Animists, Confucionists, and Buddhist; they were forced at gunpoint (basically) to accept European rule and Christian rules. I once asked a class of mine how they would feel if someone came to their town by force and told them they would only eat if they agreed to spout the tenents of some other religion than Christianity. They basically — except for two who got it — said that it was okay to force Christianity on others because it was “right;” but that other religions were way out of line if they tried to force them to beleive or even mouth tenets opposed to theirs.
I was glad of the two . . . inch by inch, the crusade against religious tyranny must continue, or we will all find oursleves victims in the next generation of a “Boxer Rebellion.” Yes, even you Christians; even you Muslims; even you Jews.
June 4th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
For God so loved the WORLD that He gave his one and only son … his son who was an innocent man, yet died a brutal death, so that we could be forgiven of our sins and spend eternity with him in heaven.
I have a great sense of humor, twisted at times by my cynical nature. I can laugh at the creativity and humor behind things that I don’t necessarily agree with. I am also someone who loves Jesus and it broke my heart to see someone portray him in this way. Would you do this to a picture of soldier who died fighting for your freedom? Your Mother who suffered to give you life? We have a human responsibility to decency regardless of which God we believe in, or of our unbelief. Even Atheists believe that Jesus was at the very least a great man who was also a wise teacher and was unjustly killed. If for no other reason, does he (Jesus) deserve a little respect? If your aim was to make a name for yourself, you have succeeded. Your very name has been recorded in Heaven long before you took this very sad step, and sadly one day you (and the rest of us) will answer to a very real God.
June 4th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Gee, E. Halsey, do you think my name is really recorded, maybe even in flashing lights up there? I’d love to face your fictitious god if instead it actually existed, and do a Q&A session. However, some of my thoughts on the standard “jeebus died for your sins” nonsense are already posted elsewhere on this site, so maybe you want to give that post a read.
June 4th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Hello Korgan,
You link seems to be broken.
June 4th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Thanks, Sidfaiwu. Not sure how the link was lost, but I’ll try posting it again. This was the intended link.
June 4th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
The biggest problem I see with the whole “Jesus died” view is that I’d say he cheated. Assuming he WAS the son of God he therefore had knowledge and wisdom far beyond that of a normal man he KNEW what waited for him after death. As mortals we can never KNOW but can only BELIEVE in it. If you had the absolute knowledge in everlasting life and fulfillment why would you NOT let yourself be tortured and killed? As it is, most people don’t really have that sort of faith. I would love to see how many Christians would be willing to be tortured to death to prove their belief in their heaven.
June 15th, 2008 at 6:19 am
god forgive us he donno wat they do
June 18th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
finally..jesus have a penis after so long..
June 21st, 2008 at 10:04 pm
This is pathetic..You should be put in prison for posting horrible cartoons like this..Jesus died for your sins, and you have to ridicule him and his sacrifice..Thats pathetic..email me at jskippy91@gmail.com if u want to talk about this, or to learn about Jesus..
June 22nd, 2008 at 7:20 am
Uhh, James, many of us here have already learned enough about your Jesus myth. Enough to soundly reject it for the nonsense that it is.
What is actually pathetic is that anyone in the modern world still clings to their Jeebus blanket in the face of modern understanding of subjects such as geology, evolution, and disease. That clinging is prime material for ridicule.
Given all the evil and wrongthink that Christianity has wrought, the ridicule is well-deserved. Bring on the cartoons, if that is what it takes to move the world past religious nonsense.
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:30 am
What I find more pathetic about James’ statement is that he hates freedom. People should be put in prison for exercising their freedom of speech via cartoons?!? “Give me liberty or give me a tyranny that protects my delicate sensibilities,” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Tell me, James, what is the appropriate jail sentence for someone who creates an offensive cartoon? Does it depend on how offensive it is? I’m deeply offended by The Family Circus regularly. Can I have it’s author arrested?
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:51 am
Posting your email adres in plaintext on an open forum? Smart move…
anyway, James, how do you feel about the comics about Muhamed? Is it alright to mock other religions? Or black people? Jews? People who like apples?
Should people who draw those be locked up as well? Either it’s all funny, or none of it is. You can’t censor humor, or it won’t be humor.
June 28th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
.. you stupid asshole ..get a fucking life mother fucker ..ur going to hell for doing that to our savior ..burn in hell asshole!! ..BBUURRRNN!!!! ..
June 29th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Just as Jesus would have put it.
June 29th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Problem with God:
Why would one worship a God that eternally tortures those that don’t stroke his ego? After all, if you assume that your God is real and the Bible is truth, then you must also accept that the only relationship man has to God is to stroke his ego (i.e. worship, be thankful, spread his word, etc.). If one does not then they are eternally tortured, and considering that is more than 2/3 of the worlds 6 billion+ current population plus the innumerable previous souls that seems just this side of evil.
The greatest evil is for one who has the knowledge and power to do good yet does nothing.
June 29th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
when will the idiots learn that religion is a stupid thing people invented a long time ago? really? do you think that some random person turned water into wine? do you really think that we should stone most of the world to death? perhaps we should all be stupid and ignore the world around us and make up excuses to attempt to explain how it fits into our views… yes that sounds smart lets do that… cause its so much better than reasoning and changing your views to fit what you know
June 30th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
listen guys
most Christians……like the ones who know what they’re talking about
don’t hate other religions….gays….or whatever
were not any better than anyone else
we are trying to live good lives and be happy
honestly i feel so much love for everyone
if someone tells you to become a Christian (usually) its because they want you to feel what they feel all the time
like whoever it was said….its not about church once a week…..its about living and striving to live a good life
i feel my god every second of every day and i feel bad for people struggaling and looking for love and feeling like theres nothing in the world and no hope anywhere
i was there and the only thing that could help was god
my god is an AMAZING loving being and he loves everyone….even the gays and murderers….i think thats where alot of christians are confused
all i can say is that no matter what people say or draw…..my god has helped me through tough times, been there during happy times, and fills me with SO much joy sometimes its unberable
you cant see the wind can you? all you can see are the EFFECTS of wind
look around….god is everywhere…..i dont know how people can look at the beauty of nature and people who love them, and say that there isnt a god
anyway……god bless you guys
were not out to get you if your not christian…..so please dont think ALL of us are hyppocrites and reatrds
(sorry about typos…..i typed fast)
June 30th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
marcdls said
The biggest problem I see with the whole “Jesus died†view is that I’d say he cheated. Assuming he WAS the son of God he therefore had knowledge and wisdom far beyond that of a normal man he KNEW what waited for him after death. As mortals we can never KNOW but can only BELIEVE in it. If you had the absolute knowledge in everlasting life and fulfillment why would you NOT let yourself be tortured and killed? As it is, most people don’t really have that sort of faith. I would love to see how many Christians would be willing to be tortured to death to prove their belief in their heaven.
the thing is…….jesus was a MAN he had temptation just like we do
but he NEVER sinned……and that was NOT easy….and when he died he took ALL of everyone before him and everyone to comes sin on himself…….think about all the pain you feel times 6 billion timse a couple hundred thousand…..that must suck
guys were not trying to turn you into something your not
why cant we just worship the god we love in peace?
and for the record…..i KNOW where i’m going when i die
find me and hold a gun to my head……torture me…..i WILL die for my god…….technically we dont worship jesus…..were supposed to worship god….even jesus did that….christian means christ like….we are supposed to follow his teachings……i will NEVER deny my god…..even if that costs me my life
some things are more important
June 30th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
okay here is where you people have it wrong
do you really think that we should stone most of the world to death?
NO
the point of being a christian is to LOVE
the people who go around shooting people or acusing people of being bad for being a different religion are stupid hyppocrites who have NO idea what theyre saying and are giving this religion a bad wrap
and for other religions its your buisness
but how many other religions have been the same for THOUSANDS of years
how many religions did your god SUFFER AND DIE for you
god loves us and thats that
oh and these cartoons are rediculous
i would have said that about any cartoons like these wether thaty where buddhist muslim blacks jews or whatever
honestly they dont offend me….they make me sad for the people who made them
i think its rude and unacceptable if it will offend people
these guys are just huge idiots
July 1st, 2008 at 5:15 am
Darcy:
One mistake Christians often make is that they mistake belief for knowledge. The main difference is that belief is a matter of opinion whereas knowledge relies on fact. Although, I do commend you for taking a step forward I must also point out that the problems with religion rely not with individuals but with groups of individuals. Nietzsche said, “madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, political parties, nations, and eras it’s the rule.” You might be a decent, upstanding, and tolerant Christian, but click around the television at what you see there. I see self-righteousness and condemnation, and somehow these people stay on the air because of support from the Christian community at large. That is madness. So bravo for being such a great person, but boo to you for taking belief as knowledge.
P.S. - I am in no pain from my sin. As far as I know, sin does not cause pain. Why would it matter if Jesus did take on the sin of the world? You do realize that one of your duties is to spread the word of God, correct? Does that not, then, change who is person is? The parable of the planter best illustrates this in that if we are not “good soil” then we cannot come to God, yet Jesus said “come to me as you are.” If the three are one, then the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can be referred to as one. How can one come to God if one is not “good soil?” One must be lie. A lie is sin. Jesus did sin.
July 1st, 2008 at 5:41 am
Oh, forgot to include that the Bible mysteriously omits 99% of Jesus’ life. How can one say he didn’t sin in that large amount of time?
July 1st, 2008 at 12:41 pm
okay so alot of jesus life HAS been ommited
but the parts that were left out were records written by secondary sources
like people who were related to the disciples or people who heard about jesus
most of the FIRST HAND accounts of his life were written by people who KNEW him
and by the way it took like 300 years or something for the people who organized the bible to decide which books to put in…..they wanted the BEST representation of the truth
not to mention it took ALLOT of prayer and fasting
i believe god works in funny ways and i believe what is in the bible is what he wants us to know
thats the point of religion
god doesn’t want people who are going to deny him until they know hes real….then whats the point
if we knew everything about god….then he wouldn’t be god…he would be just like us
and your right…..its not exactly knowledge….it all has to do with the way people interprate the bible and yes i CHOOSE to BELIEVE what the bible says
and by the way sin might not hurt you now
but the bible is really just simple common sense rules that EVERY organized society ever created has followed
sin…even simple sins like lying….hurt eventually….even in small amounts and most sins aren’t that bad
its what it leads to that is the worst
like say someone lied to their parents about going to a party….big deal….but then that leads to trying drugs…again so what
but then that leads to addictions….which leads to losing family and things that are close to you
and its not guaranteed that it will happen
but there is a chance and the bible keeps us away from doing things that will cause us pain
July 1st, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Truth is a three edged sword: your truth, their truth, and the truth. You take it on faith that your truth, the one you’ve learned, is the truth. Your truth is based on thier truth. Their truth was 300 years removed from the truth. You are 1700 years removed from their truth. So, what is the truth? None know. One of the points of their truth was the divinity of your Christ. Had they voted him a man your truth would most certainly be different. Seems a little silly to me that you would put so much stock in your truth seeing in how it is most probably nothing like the truth.
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:50 am
rusine ,rusine ,rusine sa va fie pentru acele imagini despre Domnul nostru Iisus Hristos
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:46 pm
true true
and thats all its really about
i cant tell anyone to be a christian…..i cant tell anyone to like me or change thier beliefs about christians
but i can say i am a christian because i CHOOSE to belive a book that has NEVER been changed since its been in print
and i’m the happiest ive ever been
i’m glad i figured stuff out now while i could
god has done AMAZING things in my life
and no matter what i say your mind wont change
but i just wish i could change the opinions about us
were not all terrible people that kill “in the name of god” who hate gays and prostitutes
heck we ALL have been in those positions
christianity is about TRYING to live like christ
i’m no better than anyone else……i still make HUGE mistakes……were in it because were TRYING
but even if most of what i belive is just that….belief
i feel my god every day
i KNOW hes real
when i gett to that alter and worship him and pray my gutts out…..i wish i could show everyone that feeling….then no one would doubt him
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:48 pm
not to mention ive matured alot
gods given this stupid 16 year old girl the strength to talk to ANYONE
praise god!
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:01 pm
One thing you, and most Christians fail to realize is that the special feeling you get is not unique to your religion. People of every faith get those same feelings. I get it from being with the woman I care for. Everyone has that special thing that makes them happy and gives them a sense of fulfillment. Just because someone doesn’t have the same fetish as you doesn’t mean you should try to get them to join your cult. Congrats that it makes you feel good, but people don’t NEED your God for fulfillment or guidance. The Brothers Grimm provide just as much moral guidance with less condemnation.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Well all i can say is atleast Jesus had a penis instead of being like allah mohmmed who cut his off because he was a transgender
July 10th, 2008 at 12:24 am
Okay, the cartoon above are unnessesary. It blasphmy. Not only against God but, and this is an unfogiveble sin, against the Holy Spirit. And for the record the feeling is unique to those who chose to follow Christ because it’s real. We’re not condeming you, we don’t hate you we’re telling you the truth. CHRIST IS THE WAY THE TRUTH THE LIFE!!!! NO man, no matter how many times you do good deeds, or love your fellow man. If you don’t accept the son of the forever Living God, you will be thrown to where there is screaming and nashing of teeth. I don’t hate anyone. I don’t hate Gays, killers, or anyone. In the words of Gandi “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” It’s that simple. I don’t hate gays, but I don’t support what they do. WWJD? That’s not just letters on a shirt, or braclet. IT MEANS SOMETHING!!! What Would Jesus Do? I can’t say I know everything about everything. I know some thing though. And That’s Without Jesus, your screwed. Oh, and to those who think the Bible contradicts it’s self…READ IT!!! It wasn’t made by man, but by God himself.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:45 am
Carl you are an idiot. Im sure there are plenty of muslims who no more agree with you than an atheist would. LOL re the bible comment. You clearly havent read it - it contradicts itself more than the Quran does (and was written by human beings, not ‘god’). BTW, ‘allah’ is supposed to be the same god of the jews and christians, but clearly you know nothing about religions you choose to criticise either.
Darcy - who told you the bible has never changed? Its been changing continously since it was first written down (between 30-200 years after a man named jesus lived - which is a long time for chinese whispers). You really should do some reading on your religion, beyond what your preacher tells you about it…
July 10th, 2008 at 2:53 am
“And for the record the feeling is unique to those who chose to follow Christ because it’s real.”
Just saying it doesn’t make it true.
“We’re not condeming you, we don’t hate you we’re telling you the truth. ”
Wow, what a convenient excuse to hate and persecute those who are different than you.
“And That’s Without Jesus, your screwed.”
Why would a god that created and supposedly loved all of man punish his own creation with eternal torture?
“Oh, and to those who think the Bible contradicts it’s self…READ IT!!! It wasn’t made by man, but by God himself.”
Ive read it, so has most of the people who frequent this site. It’s a poorly written and badly edited collection of stories that came from sketchy sources.
July 10th, 2008 at 4:49 am
Jayman, what are the sources for your info on the NT documents? Are you not merely repeating other peoples opinions?
July 10th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Fact: First Council of Nicaea occured 325 C.E.
Fact: Canon established for Christian faith during Councils
Fact: Divinity of Christ was voted on in first council
Fact: 17 other councils held prior to Protestant Reformation
July 11th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
“Fact: First Council of Nicaea occured 325 C.E.”
OK
“Fact: Canon established for Christian faith during Councils”
OK.
“Fact: Divinity of Christ was voted on in first council”
OK
“Fact: 17 other councils held prior to Protestant Reformation”
OK
So what is your argument? None of the above is the least controversial as it stands nor does any of it establish Jayman’s claims.
July 12th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Each council was held to determine canon. It also revised current canon. How much do you think humans could change a religion in 17 revisions over a 1200 year period? That is the point.
July 13th, 2008 at 6:11 am
“Each council was held to determine canon.”
False. The Church generally recognized most of the NT books in the First Century. Only a few were in doubt and that doubt was largely to do with authorship, as apostolic authorship and/or authority were the primary criteria. Nicea brought together leaders from the churches, by then spread over a wide geographical area, to tidy up the loose ends of the canon, and to exclude the pseudopigrapha. Put together, all the *reliable evidence* both textual, historical and archeological support the traditional view that all the NT documents were written in the apostolic period, i.e., the First Century. The synoptic gospels, and possible John, were written in their final form, during the period of the eyewitnesses of the events they record.
“It also revised current canon.”
The only revision of any significance is the addition by the Roman Catholic Church of the OT Apocrypha. This happenned at a very much later date and was rejected by the Reformation. The NT Christians accepted the whole OT canon of the Jews, albeit in the form of the LXX.
“How much do you think humans could change a religion in 17 revisions over a 1200 year period?”
This is utter hogwash. We possess today all the text of the NT canon. None is missing. Of the textual variations, and they are relatively few, no important teaching is obscured or seriously affected. The text is in excess of 99.5% certain. No other document, religious or otherwise, including all the classics, is anywhere near as well attested, thus if you reject the NT as historically reliable documents, you must logically reject all ancient documents as reliable, including all the classics.
“That is the point.”
Perhaps the point is that your sources are unreliable!
July 13th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Historically accurate and fact are two separate things. To say that Moses lead the Jews away from Egypt is one thing, yet to say that he parted the Red Sea to do so is entirely different. I have no doubt a man named Jesus existed. But to say he was the Son of God is laughable. Histories all over the world are colored with their own little theologies. Plus, cultures borrow/plagiarize with reckless abandon.
Eden/Tree of Knowledge/Snake - Gilgamesh
Noah’s Ark - pick a culture, they’ve got a story
Jesus - Many of his “words” seem to be mysteriously repeated from Psalms…hmmm, couldn’t have been plagiarized by the NT writers…never
Resurrection - Horus of Egypt did it over a millennium before Jesus
Arc of the Covenant - Egypt had one long before the Jews
What about Old Hebrew texts that were omitted from the Christian OT like the Zohar? Should they not be considered true because of the arbitrary decisions of people 1700 years ago or should they since they are the foundation for Judaism, which is what Christianity grew from? Christianity might have historical fact in it’s texts, but that’s not so say the Bible is true.
July 13th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
My claims were for the reliability of the texts themselves. One cannot begin to claim anything for their content if they were not authentic in the first place. Once authenticity is established, then one can begin to consider it as an historical witness, but if it is not, like the Zohar, then why even bother?
You raise many diverse and confused things, all of which are thoroughly answerable, but your comments merely show that you are far from careful in your research and sources. It’s Dan Brown kind of stuff.
About Zohar, how can it be claimed as part of the OT canon when there is no witness to it until it appeared in 13th Century Spain? The OT canon of Jesus times had no further additions since four centuries before, yet the most generous claim for Zohar might be that Moses De Leon used some ancient texts, but all after the NT period.
About plagiarism, why judge ancient texts by modern literary standards? Of course Jesus quoted Psalms and nearly every other OT book as he regarded them as authoritative, i.e., as part of the canon that most of his contemporaries accepted.
“I have no doubt a man named Jesus existed. But to say he was the Son of God is laughable.” Well to be sure, if there is no God for him to be the Son of then keep laughing. But if God exists, in the Judeo-Christian sense, then one should expect that he might intervene in human affairs and that there be verifiable data to investigate. But if you have made up your mind that such intervention is impossible at the outset, a priori, then serious investigation might be a waste of time.
July 13th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
About plagiarism, I made no notion to judge the old texts. I simple pointed out that much of what Christians hold to are taken from other cultures. Plagiarism is when one author copies an idea or text from another. This works cross culturally too.
Jesus didn’t quote Psalms. To quote one would expect to see a reference to the original text. What I made reference too is that the words Jesus can also be found, in Psalms. Verbatim are the words “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” and “Into thine hand I commit my spirit.” Being given vinegar to drink was also made reference too in Psalms. Belief in God aside, it’s unlikely that three such events would be probable. What is more probable is that whoever wrote about Jesus had knowledge of Psalms and added those in for authenticity.
The biggest problem I have pertaining to the Judeo-Christian God is that his followers comprise less than 1/3 of the world’s population. If he wants to damn all those who don’t follow him thats currently 4.5 billion plus people, plus the innumerable souls of the past. With that sort of attrition rate, I wouldn’t consider him a decent God, assuming he exists.
July 14th, 2008 at 6:25 am
NT Christianity is rooted firmly in the OT. The similarities with other belief systems you alluded to earlier are superficial when scrutinized in detail and dependency cannot be shown. The exceptions are largely cultural in nature.
One can’t read the teaching of Jesus and not be struck with his expansive command of the OT scriptures and his consciousness of his continuity with them in life and teaching and in his debates with the religious leaders.
When you say: “Belief in God aside, it’s unlikely that three such events would be probable. What is more probable is that whoever wrote about Jesus had knowledge of Psalms and added those in for authenticity,” this is the kind of guess work contemporary “liberals” use because they can’t bear anything that smacks of a violation of their naturalism. And if no evidence can be allowed to count against naturalism, then it suffers from unfalsifiability.
July 14th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Yes, one could say naturalism suffers from unfalsifiability because it is a philosophy and not a religion. Religious occurrences can be tested and proved true or false yet a philosophy can neither be proved true or false. You are comparing apples to oranges. Besides, it’s not “guess work.” It’s probability which is a form of statistics. In my experience, research has done much more good for the world than pushing that “I believe” button.
I find it odd how these “superficial” similarities just happen to be key points in the Christian faith. If a religion adopts something from Christianity then they adopted it from Christianity, however if the reverse occurs it’s merely a coincidence. I have run onto this same situation with every Christian I’ve ever had a debate with about the origins of their faith. You are not new at attempting to ignore fact, people of your faith have been doing that for many millennia.
July 14th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
I do not believe Jesus would approve of this website. Has anyone ever heard of the bracelets ‘WWJD’ before? I have 37 of them on my arm in different colors. You should to. I would fully intend on it.
Chow,
Jesus Lover
July 15th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
“I have 37 of them on my arm in different colors.”
Too bad you didn’t spend you time and/or money getting those on something useful like helping the needy. Good for you that you like showing everyone how you put more value on looking like a devoted Christian rather than acting like one.
“I would fully intend on it.”
Speak intelligibly please.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:56 am
“Jesus Lover” do you really love Jesus? How do you know WWJD? The mocking on this site feeds off the kind of irrational “freak” fodder that you are offering! MarcDLS gives you very good advice such that he could have been quoting from the New Testament.
July 16th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Yes, naturalism is indeed a philosophy and one that is considered essential to a scientific POV by secularists. If true science is philosophically dependent upon naturalism (e.g., there can be no non-natural causes to natural phenomena)and this philosophical belief cannot be falsified or proven either true or false, then how can the findings of science be regarded as true or approximately true?
“a philosophy can neither be proved true or false” Is this the same as saying philosophical propositions can neither be proved true or false? Do not philosophies consist of propositions that are intended to model or make sense of the real world? If such can, in principle, neither be proven true or false, then how is the truth status of a philosophy, such as naturalism, any better of than a religion?
“If a religion adopts something from Christianity then they adopted it from Christianity, however if the reverse occurs it’s merely a coincidence.” It’s one thing to claim that a similarity denotes common origin but another to show it. Given the universality of religious belief in all the history of mankind, one should expect that there be some common subject matter, and indeed there is. For instance, the question “how should a society conduct itself so as to remain cohesive?” “What laws are appropriate for harmony and safety, etc?” Universally we find certain moral codes about property and justice, etc. If most religions and cultures have prohibitions against theft, for instance, this does not necessitate cross cultural borrowings. Could it not be that each culture intuitively knows that such is morally wrong and destructive? The spread of the negative forms of the Golden Rule similarly is better explained by the universal capacity of moral reasoning and the commonality of human nature than from “plagiarism”
Concerning the cultural traditions of the fall of man and the universal flood, it is interesting that these traditions are widely spread over all the world, such that there is hardly a tribe to be found that doesn’t possess some form of them in their mythology. This is not plagiarism but rather a common tradition that is very ancient.
July 16th, 2008 at 6:01 am
“…then how can the findings of science be regarded as true or approximately true?”
Science can be tested, retested, and verified. If not, it is considered theory until it can be proven or falsified.
I don’t see how the second argument holds up for any of the examples since none of them are moral truths. The closest, possibly, is the story of Eden, but that is a stretch.
“…there is hardly a tribe to be found that doesn’t possess some form of them in their mythology.”
If so many cultures share this then you should be able to say that they all have equal validity. However, Christians are stuck on the notion that their way is the right way and that is what I take exception too.
I believe that we’ve moved beyond that point where we need religion to give us moral guidance. I acknowledge that it was necessary at one point in the past, but we’ve moved past that point.
July 17th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
“If so many cultures share this then you should be able to say that they all have equal validity. However, Christians are stuck on the notion that their way is the right way and that is what I take exception too.”
What do you mean by “equal validity”? do you mean the cultures themselves or the traditions of the cultures or the belief systems of all cultures? How could they in any sense be equally valid?
Christians, that is those who are orthodox in belief, are indeed “stuck on the notion that their way is the right way” and it is rational for them to do so. They believe in the law of non-contradiction. Two opposing views can either be one right and the other wrong or both wrong, but not both right in the same sense. That’s why I prefer to talk to Atheists than so-called liberal Christians and moral and epistemic relativists.
July 20th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
that wrong making fun of that
July 20th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
what th heck is your problem making fun of jesus
July 21st, 2008 at 3:14 am
Making fun of Jesus is no more offensive than mocking santa claus… Except it upsets morons! :)
July 21st, 2008 at 8:08 pm
“it is rational for them to do so”
It is rational for Muslims to kill children because they are guaranteed to get into heaven. Would you say the same thing to them?
By equal validity I mean that in Christianity is regarded as truth in America whereas other religions are looked at as myth. Christianity gets much more publicity than any other religion. But as soon as you start trying to introduce another faith they get up in arms and do whatever they can to suppress said belief.
They should be views as equally valid since none of it can be proven. If they could they would be called fact and not faith.
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:25 am
Jesus never condemned anyone to hell while he was alive, and the artists behind these cartoons haven’t been condemned either. Jesus doesn’t want you to suffer for all eternity. He wants to be your friend and your savior. It’s not up to Him whether or not you burn. It’s your choice.
Praise be to the Father who made us, to Christ who saved us, and to the Spirit who guides us.
July 22nd, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Ah, lets count the ways Hellofish is a fool. Assuming your Bible is true we know something very important: God knew the end from the beginning (Psalm 139:16 Isaiah 44:7 Ephesians 1:4-5 Titus 1:2).
We can safely assume that your God created Lucifer and that special third of the Angels knowing they would betray him, and God chose to do it anyway and punish them for it. God then created Hell for them, but this was already on his to-do list with that aforementioned assumption, where he knew he’d also put man later. He would put man there for eating the forbidden fruit, which God knew man would do before he ever gave him the opportunity to do it, and yet God chose to to do it anyway and punish man for it. It seems rather cruel of your God to do these things. What would you think of a man who beat his dog to death for eating the steak he put out in the middle of his yard? The dog at least has death as a release, whereas man gets to suffer eternally in hell. Not a god I’d care to worship.
He sent his son to die for our sins, seems like he was just fixing his own mistake in the first place. That’s not normally something to congratulate someone on. “Good job fixing the mess you made. Keep it up!”
Ah, the Spirit. You say it guides us. I’d be more incline to believe it tries to con us into cow tow and play nice. Seems man’s only purposes in life, according to your Bible, is to praise God, spread his word, and “beget.” This is not a very dignified existence for something he supposedly loves.
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:17 pm
The context in which I used “rational” was epistemic. We were talking about “belief system” and the notions of truth and validity. If the teachings of Mohammed and Islam were true, i.e., the God of Islam exists, the Koran represents his self-revelation to Mohammed, and thus Mohammed is his prophet, THEN whatever the Koran teaches is true and right or good. Thus, if the Koran actually teaches (I don’t know that it does) “Muslims to kill children because they [Who, the Muslim killer or the children?] are guaranteed to get into heaven” the believer in the Koran might be rational to carry this out.
I, of course, believe Mohammed was a false prophet, that he borrowed, in a confused manner, the available corrupted teachings of Judaism and Christianity in the 7th Century and that he used his “revelations” to justify his own corrupt practises.
Now you could say that I am intolerant to say this and that I ought to accept Islam and Atheism with “equal validity” with Christianity. But maybe, if you believe Atheism to be true and possessing validity, that I ought to accept it as “fact” and dismiss Christianity as myth. But wouldn’t this be equally intolerant?
If the different religions are false and Atheism is true, then only what is true is valid. It is not intolerant (in the classical sense) to reject an opposing belief system as false and claim that one’s own is true, but it is to oppress and persecute one’s opposition. Every belief system’s adherents have done that at one time or another, whether or not it is consistent with their system.
You make a dichotomy between faith and fact. Why is it not possible or rational for faith to be founded on fact? Atheists believe that their assertions are founded on fact and reason. Also this list would hardly exist without Atheistic assertions of truth or fact, and moral assertions and judgements against us religious freaks.
July 23rd, 2008 at 5:48 am
I think there has been a misunderstanding between us. I am not an Atheist. I am a Nontheist, I believe nothing specific. I believe in options. As I see it, there are two options:
A) There is no God, hence no point in having faith in one.
B) There is a God, however due to his actions he is not a God I’d want to worship.
I argue against all beliefs, though most of my background is in Judeo-Christian theology. And, to clear up a point, the belief is that the child goes to heaven. The adult Muslim is only guaranteed heaven if they die for their belief or kill an infidel. Regardless, I find it appalling to justify any action with the argument that it was in keeping with your religion. It opens the floodgates for everything up to and including genocide. It brings a certain quote to mind; “I think that on the balance the moral influence of religion has been awful. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil. But for good people to do evil, that takes religion.” -Steven Weinberg.
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:38 pm
On a side note: Do you remember which article it was that I slammed that guy with the WWJD armbands in 27 different colors? I couldn’t load the site for a few days and I forgot which one that was.
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Marc it was post #74 and I replied on #75
July 24th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Thanks for the correction. It appears that, though you haven’t used the word, your view is essentially agnostic. As with Atheists, Agnostics come in varieties and each have different background reasons. Some might simply not know whether God exists and evidence to date doesn’t seem convincing. Should the evidence present itself convincing for a coherent concept of God, such a person might be open to such an acknowledgment of his existence. At the other end of the scale, some Agnostics are virtual Atheists in that they are certain that such evidence cannot be found in principle or that the very concept is incoherent.
My take on your position from what you’ve written, and especially from point B. above, is that your beef with Judeo-Christian theology is along moral lines. However, I think that your understanding of it is deficient, especially as seen in post #84 (where it comes with attitude.)
*If* Theism is true and coherent, and the actions of God are as you understand them (along the lines of post #84), your point B. might be stated: “God is not essentially good and therefore not worthy of worship.â€
However, this implies that you possess the moral grounds and criteria (and faculties) independent of God by which you presume to make such a moral judgement. How can there be such grounds to judge God that are above God? They would have to be possessed by a greater being than God who is, by definition, the Ultimate, the first uncaused cause of all that exists. Would it not be more becoming to our finitude to begin with admitting that we don’t fully understand his actions or that our present understanding is inadequate? I think your reply to Hellofish could be adequately answered point by point, however, since each point you make is deeply skewed it does not seem that such would be satisfying.
A. and B. is like a “rock and a hard place.†Neither provides any hope or grounds for human dignity either side of the grave.
Just an note on what you might call “the problem of religion.†Given that man is a religious being, that Atheism is the new kid on the block, and that until relatively recently everyone was religious, it is not hard to say that religion is the root cause of all the problems in the world. But it is pretty meaningless. That people have used religion as a justification for evil is indisputable, but whether they are justified in doing so may well be questionable. However, if we take into account the intelligence of mankind and combine it with mankind’s inherent evil nature (you and me included), it is not hard to see that any religion, good or bad, can be a tool for the cunning devices of our wickedness.
July 24th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
The attitude in post 84 was mostly because I was annoyed at the last lines of post 83. They weren’t necessary and I took offense to their presence. I don’t believe my knowledge of the Bible is deficient since I have read it a couple of times and used to preach from it. I have since grown up.
To hold God to a moral standard is not to say that there are grounds to judge God that are above it, but what I try to point out is that and sentient being that chooses not to follow their own guidelines for existence is a hypocrite and therefore unworthy of praise. As for my morals, they are fluid. Any action can be justified, but that is not to say all actions can be justified. It’s on a case by case basis.
As far as Atheism “being the root cause of all the problems in the world,” I must point out that correlation does not equate to causation. I must point out that the Inquisition, Witch Hunts, Crusades, Holocaust, Slavery, and the many Islamic Terrorist attacks did involve religion as fuel for the fire that burned countless innocent people.
As so far, the only God that I have found that I would ever consider becoming a member of their church would be the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
July 27th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Marc, I didn’t say, or imply, that “Atheism is ‘the root cause of all the problems in the world,’” in fact I don’t believe it is. My points were that until relatively recent times, all people in all ages have been religious in one way or another and that regarding the concurrence of religion and evil, as you say, “correlation does not equate to causation.”
It actually is just a very convenient broad brush stroke that Atheists and Anti-theists like to paint. I argued on another thread that the 20th Century saw the rise of secularist a-religious belief systems and there has been certainly no letup of evil in the world. From memory, I think it was JL Mackie who claimed that there was 10 to the power of 14 turps of evil in the world.
Moral evil as well as moral goodness require moral agents who have the freedom to make moral decisions for which they are morally responsible and thus either morally praiseworthy or morally culpable. Your saying that a “sentient being that chooses not to follow their own guidelines for existence is a hypocrite and therefore unworthy of praise,” is exactly right, be they religious or otherwise. But I can’t see how any of this furniture is at home in universe without God.
Thus, if human persons are so equipped with the faculties of moral freedom, and if such faculties are universally defective, being biased toward self-regarding rather than others-regarding, perhaps this might be a more accurate source of the prevalence and cause of moral evil in the world? And as I said, combined with the general distribution of intelligence, religion or any ideology, can function to inflame such with dire consequences.
The flying Spaghetti Monster might be an answer. Especially if the sucking up to infinite slimy spaghetti is required. It would keep people preoccupied with trivia. But then the sauce would have to be pretty good.
July 30th, 2008 at 7:17 am
tari ma fhadu dofa bon chod
July 30th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Darcy - who told you the bible has never changed? Its been changing continously since it was first written down (between 30-200 years after a man named jesus lived - which is a long time for chinese whispers). You really should do some reading on your religion, beyond what your preacher tells you about it…
just so you know
i do research
because i have always been one to question….ever since being a little kid…and going through the crap ive been through i refuse to trust anything until ive had time to resaerch and form my own opinion
everything i believe about my religion are MY beleifes
some hard core christians that still believe the fire and brimstone crap would say i’m going straight to hell because i think tatoos are awesome and have a couple of body peircings my self
i think the christian religion has alot less to do about afterlife and alot more to do with now
heaven is a perk to being a christian but the point is to live a happy life on earth
wether people belive it or not
choose to be christian or not
say i’m insane or not
i LOVE my god and i know i would be off somewhere pregnant and strung out on drugs if it werent for him
wether that sounds unhappy to you or not….i like to be in control of my brain
i would die for my god…..dont believe me? try me
becuase the way i look at it
id rather believe with all my heart that there is a god and find out when i die that there isnt one
then deny him my whole entire life…..live unhappy and die to find out that i have to spend eternity in hell
but seriously i believe in hell on earth
id be there already without my god
so i’m done with the back and forth because i’m never going to get through to non believers that are so bent in their ways
i’m just asking that even if you refuse to believe
cut us some slack…..we have the right to believe in our god and tell whoever we want about it……if you dont want to listen ignore us
this whole thing has thought me to be sure in what i beleive and thats all i really needed
so goodbye and god bless
:D
August 1st, 2008 at 4:30 am
If “[Christians] have the right to believe in [your] god and tell whoever [they] want about it” then I have the right to tell Christians whatever I want about what I believe, but you not slack, and to be happy without your god. And I have found that Christians who are bent on their god will never face the truth because they can’t handle life without their “God” as a crutch. If you want to try to impress your beliefs on the world around you I have just as much right to give you crap about it.
August 3rd, 2008 at 3:28 pm
We’ll see who is right when you all are rotting in hell…does play with fire, you might get burned!
August 3rd, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I would rather risk hell than worship a self-centered, self-contradicting, petty, hypocritical, sadistic God like your’s. See post # 84 for questions.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:35 am
I laughed hard at Darcy’s post#93. This person hit just about every single stereotype for the brainwashed believer that I have ever heard of. haha. The funniest thing is they actually think they believe in god. This person has no idea that they are brainwashed. I love it. “I do my own research” indeed. Reading the bible does NOT constitute research, by the way.
August 7th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I love you my Lord, you are beautiful and holy ,my heart dearly . Not cursing your creation , but loving it so to your bossom… I thank you what you told , many will enter thru’ wide door but falls. This is what happening I guess
August 14th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Christians, i dont understand why you are upset over these drawings, its not like you drew them.yes, it might alil insulting to have youre god in a horrible picture done by “unwise devil children” but if im not mistaken your beliefs are to love not to hate.The hate you have over these drawings and artists is the devil, the devil is letting you hate these children, dont let him,fight the devil.Instead of telling them how theyre wrong try helping them, but before you can help them you must help yourself.
i noticed some comments that didnt really make sense;
for example:
“Oh my god. Jesus!..w..with a p…peNIS!!!? That does it, damn you liberals!”
Why wouldnt Jesus have a penis?
“I am not an Atheist. I am a Nontheist, I believe nothing specific. I believe in options. As I see it, there are two options:
A) There is no God, hence no point in having faith in one.
B) There is a God, however due to his actions he is not a God I’d want to worship.”
Fisrt off,there is no such thing as nontheist and it seems like youre definition of a “nontheist” is infact almost pure atheism.second off,why would you say there is no god and then change your mind as an option?seems like youre confused, which means
you need psychological help.third off,god doesnt act ,god is no enemy,we are our only enemy,so some psychological help of advice, stop blaming something that “doesnt exist”.
“We’ll see who is right when you all are rotting in hell…does play with fire, you might get burned!”
John,what you said there is a actually a sin “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.” but thank god, one sin isnt enough to go to hell, therefor the person you were talking to wont go to hell,sorry.
And to all the unbelievers, dont listen to these christian hypocritical ignorant darns, these ppl are sick mentally they need to feel secure by believing in something so mentally wrong.Let them be.Would you punch a handicap kid in the face?! well this is the same thing dont bother the christians.
August 15th, 2008 at 5:23 am
Marc, re your posts 84 & 96, first you’ve got the wrong god because you don’t understand the God of biblical theism or the Bible. None of your descriptions are accurate or your arguments rational. You have simply got the wrong end of the stick. Second, if you weren’t so bitter from your bad or hypocritical religion experiences (and given the religious freak-fodder around there’s a lot to be had), you might be open-minded enough to do some serious investigation in the right places.
August 15th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
stupid mind
August 16th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
whoever made this is a damn fucking douchebag
August 16th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
at least im not the one going to hell. fuck yall shit pushers
August 20th, 2008 at 3:00 am
i BELIEVE IN JESUS HE IS THE BROTHER,FRIEND&SAVIOR
thanks,
Royeth
August 28th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
micheal of post 99:
I said that I beleive in options. The only two options that can exist are that there either is or isn’t a god. I have contengencies for either situation. An Anthiest believs there is no God, and lack a contengency for one that does exists.
Neando of post 100:
My statements are based on observable facts from an unbiased point of view and the written word of your god, i.e. the Bible. Bitterness toward the Christian god is based on the conclusions drawn from the previously mentioned unbiased observations.
August 29th, 2008 at 2:49 am
So whats your contingency if you have the WRONG god? There have been thousands of gods worshipped throughout history, some for much longer than the jewish yahweh/allah dude in the sky. and maybe they get just as pissed if you have the wrong guy.
August 29th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
In that case it is a no win situation. Seeing as how Christianity and Islam are the two greatest religions, each controlling about 33% of the world’s population (6.7 billion), the thought that if either one was the true god and would damn all those that don’t follow them would seem to make them unworthy of worship. The same goes for all other religions/gods since they control much less of the population. Unworthiness would have an inverse relationship to the number of followers said religion/god had. So regardless of which “God” I pin this on, they all have the same arguement against them.
September 4th, 2008 at 6:16 am
Jayman, Marc used two terms: god and God. (Possibly inadvertently). As you say, people down through the ages have worshiped thousands of gods. Putting aside the question of their ontology, these have always been regarded as finite “dudes in the sky” with varying degrees of power albeit superhuman. As conceptually finite beings, there logically could be zillions of them and could all be scrapping for pieces of pie in the sky.
The theistic concept of God is entirely different. There logically can only be one without rivals as He holds all His attributes maximally or infinitely–there just isn’t any room for equals. Also, He is by definition the uncaused first cause of all else that exists. So should there be any other gods of whatever number, they would be finite and inferior.
Note that I am not here arguing for the existence of a God or gods, just trying to clarify the standard confusion. Should one claim that gods do exist, then there is the question of where they came from since they need a cause for their being, and if there is claimed a hierarchy of such beings and causes, such causes cannot logically regress infinitely. However, the question of the origin of the God of theism is fallacious–a category error.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
It was supposed to be “god.” The one thing that has always somewhat intrigued me is that people are more ready to accept the idea of a God that always has been rather than the idea that we are here for no other cause than chance.
I hold no qualm with the theistic concept of God. What I disagree with is anyone who would claim that their god is the theistic God. I think that Christians are the worst of this since they refer to their god as “God.” This becomes confused with the theistic “God” when it should be set aside with anyone else’s “god.”
The only contradiction I could see is that if the theistic God possessed all attributes to infinity then said God would both be infinity good and infinity evil. Therefore, the theistic God could not be any god that I currently know of. Though it would explain why the world is the way it is.
September 4th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Marc, perhaps it could just be that people have good and valid reasons for belief in God and that there are good reasons why people have believed in gods. I for one can think of no valid reasons to adopt the idea that “we are here for no other cause than chance.”
The theistic concept of God is strictly Judeo-Christian. All other theisms (e.g., Islam)are later borrowings. Everyone who claims to worship the theistic God can legitimately make that claim even though their view of Him may be defective in some way as He would still be the object of their worship (should He exist). So if the theists’ object of worship is not a god but God, why then “should” they think that things are on a par with polytheism?
September 4th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Howdy all,
I for one can think of no valid reasons to adopt the idea that “we are here for no other cause than chance.”
If it was the truth would that not be a valid reason?
Cheers
Simon Bond
September 4th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Marc, On good and evil there is a fundamental error in your concept of theism. The view you propose is more at home in Eastern monism or pantheism. In theism God is the perfect good. Evil, being the antithesis of good, cannot–logically and existentially–be an attribute of God. Further, evil is not a thing in itself. Its reality is in the fact that it is a corruption of the good. Everything that God does (creates, purposes, says, etc.) issues from who He is. Evil is the corruption of this.
On the other hand, if the universe is ultimately uncaused and “we are here for no other cause than chance,” nothing is here for a purpose and nothing can have a proper function other than what humans arbitrarily determine, individually or collectively. Evolution is undirected and purposeless according to Naturalism. This means that there can be no real evil. Religion of any flavour included. So then, it is irrational for Atheists to claim on Naturalistic grounds that any religion is evil. Undesirable for them, of course, but not evil. If atheists were of the calibre of JL Mackie they would understand this.
So if your complaint against evil is made as an inconsistency that is within a theistic Judeo-Christian paradigm, you can only make it as a merely logical claim from the outside. “The problem of evil” is a Judeo-Christian problem that only exists within a theistic context. Evil really does exist and moral evil is at the root of it. Moral evil is the malfunction of persons who have the freedom to choose good or evil. The freedom to choose is itself morally good (an attribute of persons created in the image of God) but the misuse of freedom (choices made against our proper function thus corrupting the good) is the origin of evil.
September 4th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Simon, if it was the truth it would be a valid reason. You want it to be the truth but do you know that it is or can be the truth? And if it is the truth, how from a Naturalistic POV of the human mind can there be truth?
September 4th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Howdy,
I never said it was the truth. You said that you couldn’t think of a valid reason for adopting that point of view. I merely pointed out that if it was the truth that would be a valid reason for adopting it. I would be careful not to take what I’ve written out of context.
I never said that’s what I want or believe is truth. Nor did I discuss any part of what truth is.
Cheers
Simon Bond
September 4th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
If evil is actually the corruption of good then there much be a force, or attribute, to cause that corruption. Being at attribute God must have that attribute to infinity. Hence, the argument stands that the theory is contradictory.
“All other theisms (e.g., Islam)are later borrowings.”
Christianity is not the first religion in the world. There were many beliefs before Christianity and Christianity itself borrows from other religions. Your statement is entirely fictional.
In addition, I would like to point out that you have no more validation for your beliefs than I do for mine. Also, evolution is a logical progression of change for a species that ensures it’s survival in the environment it exists in. There is a computer that uses an evolution algorithm to invent things. Last I heard the machine possessed 3 US Patents. Seems as though evolution does work, at least in my mind.
September 5th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Simon: “I never said that’s what I want or believe is truth. Nor did I discuss any part of what truth is.” Correct, I apologize.
Simon: “If it was the truth would that not be a valid reason?”
I said it would and asked “And if it is the truth, how from a Naturalistic POV of the human mind can there be truth?” What do you think?
September 5th, 2008 at 5:58 am
Marc: “If evil is actually the corruption of good then there much be a force, or attribute, to cause that corruption. Being at attribute God must have that attribute to infinity. Hence, the argument stands that the theory is contradictory.”
Firstly, I said that the cause of evil is that of persons who have the freedom to choose to do evil. This requires, in my view, libertarian free will. Essential to personal free agency is the independent ability to freely choose to do or not do an action, including moral actions. This of itself is good, and in biblical theism an important aspect of being created in the image of the Creator. But it comes with risk and responsibility. Everyone will ultimately be held accountable for this responsibility.
Secondly, It logically contradictory to hold that God could hold attributes of both absolute goodness and absolute (or any degree of) evil simultaniously if evil is a corruption of the good. Corruption of the good is only possible of finite personal beings. The only way it can be claimed that God is the efficient cause of evil committed by His creatures is that they are not free, i.e., determinism. (A particular branch of Christianity, Islam, and most non-theistic religions are deterministic; Naturalism is necessarily so.)
September 5th, 2008 at 6:20 am
“Christianity is not the first religion in the world. There were many beliefs before Christianity and Christianity itself borrows from other religions. Your statement is entirely fictional.”
I actually said “Judeo-Christian” and not merely Christian. Independent verification for the historicity of the Old Testament writings date to the beginning of the 2nd Century BC or earlier, and those writings claim to be a record of human history that long predates them, certainly that predate any other.
Jesus, his first followers, and all but one of the NT writers were Jewish to the core. Central to the claims of the New Testament is that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah (the Christ) of the Old Testament hope, and thus the continuity of Bible’s claim for unity of origin and purpose.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Oops, that was 2nd Millennium not Century!
September 5th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Religon is very corrupt and I in no way am religous it is a tool to get people to do what they want them to do it is responsible for millions of death if there wasnt religon or race things would be alot more peaceful.9/11 was religon related,the bible justified slavery,the holocaust was religous related.Without religon many evil things just wouldnt have happened
September 6th, 2008 at 3:44 am
Dj, Most of what you have said is either false, distorted or highly disputable. But these ideas are pretty common, especially among people who have been burned in some way by religious people in their lives.
But there is a real problem with the idea of “evil” if you are not religious. Evil presupposes a background of good, and good in the moral sense is normative; it requires a universal standard that is beyond the individual tastes and preferences. It possesses an objective property, but without metaphysics this just cannot be so. It is far too odd and out of place (they used to say queer) a thing in a universe without God.
So maybe you really mean to say something like you hate religion and religious people and would rather that they disappeared from the the world. You really have to religious in some way to properly say that religion (or organized religion) is evil.
September 6th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Firstly, last time I checked the angels had free will and God had free will, not just persons as you stated. With that I return to my previous statement that there must be some attribute that causes one to choose to corrupt good. This is, of course, assuming that the only force in the cosmos is good. I believe that is faulty since everything that your God created seems to have some sort of balance to it.
Secondly, I’m interested in seeing how you tackle the problem with the theistic God not being able to be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. Since the world is flawed, as it is, it does not appear that he could be what you’ve made him out to be. A God that does posses these three traits couldn’t allow such a world to exist. He would correct it for the force of good. In my mind, the greatest, and only true evil, is the choice not to do good when one has the power. If the theistic God were true he obviously allows evils to continue, and therefore commits the ultimate evil. This is, yet again, a contradiction.
September 7th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Regarding post 121, the statement “You really have to religious in some way to properly say that religion (or organized religion) is evil.” is simply false. Morality and the standard for what is evil, and what is not, is better derived from common interest and the Golden Rule than from religious nonsense, no matter how much you prattle on about semantics.
Religion is ridiculous
September 9th, 2008 at 5:15 am
Korgan, I’d take notice if you had an argument. Start with my “semantics.”
September 11th, 2008 at 5:09 am
Marc, when I said “persons” I was meaning all personal beings whether embodied or otherwise. In #117 I said “Essential to personal free agency is the independent ability to freely choose to do or not do an action, including moral actions. This of itself is good, and in biblical theism an important aspect of being created in the image of the Creator.” If God created man in his image, a crucial aspect of that likeness would surely be personhood, and it is not unreasonable to believe that if God created human persons, he would not be less than that himself.
When you repeated “…there must be some attribute that causes one to choose to corrupt good,” this assumes some form of determinism concerning human persons, which, if one accepts libertarian free agency, such determinism is avoided. Given human free agency, moral responsibility ensues. God, then is responsible for the creation of such agents with moral capacities (which in itself is a good), but not the evil actions such an agent freely chooses.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:59 am
bastard remove those pictures of jesus if you were in my country somebody would have taken care of you
September 11th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Thank you, nilus, for providing at last the long awaited threat of violence from a Christian! The proof we have been waiting for that the religion of the prince of peace, the lamb of god (such violent imagry!)is nothing more than another version of Murder, Inc.!
But really it’s probably just a posting from a muslim or one of their apologists trying to prove that Christiainity is really the religion to fear.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
God help who ever drew these cartoons
September 12th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Re post 128, bryan, why do you say that? The cartoonists seem to be quite competent at their drawing and therefore don’t need any help, whereas you have no evidence (examples) that show that your purported god can draw better cartoons than these!
September 15th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Re 125:
Maybe I should rephrase the statement. Since one chooses to to corrupt good that choice is born out of a motivation. The motivation is spawned from an aspect of that individual’s personality. That aspect of the individual’s personality is either genetically programmed or taught to the individual. This aspect is the attribute that I speak of. Determinism and Free Will are compatible concepts so long as one doesn’t take an extreme stance to either side of the issue. You are trying to argue against Hard Determinism. However, I don’t believe that since on the quantum level the uncertainty principle causes that to be illogical. Extremes are not the norm, so one must not assume to take an extreme stance when it comes to reality around us. I don’t fault you for it since, as a Christian, extremes/absolutes are ingrained into you. God being the extreme good and Lucifer being the extreme evil. So, I hope you can understand me argument better now that you understand what exactly it is I am speaking about.
Also, you made no comment about my second argument from post 122.
September 16th, 2008 at 5:53 am
Marc, I wrote a reply to your second argument recently but lost it and then got too busy. Since there isn’t a quick answer that would do, I needed a bit of time.
Part of that answer involves the concept of libertarian free will or free agency, hence our present discussion on that needs clarification at least. You will be aware that determinism has both religious and secularist adherents. The Christian tradition of Calvinism (which has its historical roots in Augustine) is deterministic. Despite a deep respect for the tradition, I do not accept determinism, hard or soft, religious or secularist, as being theologically or logically viable. The compatibilism that you espouse (as do the Calvinists) doesn’t work. I think of it as a slight of hand and that soft determinism collapses to hard.
Since I am not a materialist or physicalist in relation to the human person, quantum physics is irrelevant. It is the soul, an immaterial substance, that is the free agent of human thought and action (dualism). Can it not be that other immaterial entities, e.g., mathematical formulas, can only be either true or false? This is “extreme/absolute is it not?
You understand that I am not here arguing for these positions but just stating them as relevant to a coherent defence of the compatibility of the presence of moral evil in the world with the God of Christian theism. I don’t think Christian determinism can present an adequate defence, on one hand, or that the Secularist challenge that you present should require that I need to accept some form of determinism in order to give a *coherent* defence.
Well, I have still to give you a reply to your “second argument”……
September 18th, 2008 at 5:19 am
The logical argument from evil against theism that you have outlined in post 122 began its modern airing in David Hume. He stated it thus: “Is He willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”
We could state it like this:
1. An all powerful God could destroy (or prevent) evil.
2. A good God would destroy evil.
3. Evil is not destroyed.
4. Therefore, there cannot possibly be such a good and powerful God.
The third premise implies that evil exists. See my post 121, 2nd paragraph, for a brief statement about that. You said, “In my mind, the greatest, and only true evil, is the choice not to do good when one has the power.” This is a strong statement for the reality of moral evil. My reply in brief, determinism (as per your post 130) requires that every action (e.g., choice) has prior external causes such that the agent does not have the power to do other than what he actually does. If this is the case (and I think it necessary to Naturalism), then what is experienced as good and evil are merely the sensations of pleasure and displeasure, etc. Good and evil having no reality outside the human experience.
The first premise: “an all-powerful God could destroy (or prevent) evil.” The attribute of all-powerfulness here is power to do everything that is logically possible to do. There are some things that an all-powerful God can NOT do. Such as, anything that is contrary to his own character or nature, make square triangles, nullify the law of non-contradiction, etc. Included would be to create morally free agents without the power to choose evil rather than good thoughts and actions and vice versa. For God to create morally free agents who are responsible for the consequences of their actions is in itself a good thing.
The second premise: “A good God would destroy evil.” This is at the heart of the matter. A short answer might be that God does desire to destroy all evil and that he will destroy all evil—in the end. Thus there is no problem with the premise as such unless it is insisted that a good God would not permit evil to exist at all. It may be that a higher good can be achieved through the temporary permission of evil (by free agents) than otherwise. There are in fact many goods that cannot be achieved without the presence of various kinds of evil, including acts of courage, heroism, scientific research in medicine, character building experiences, etc. If this were a world where everything was perfect and paradisaical, where would be the motivation to achieve, to perfect, etc?
The third premise: “Evil is not destroyed” is answered in Christian eschatology. God will destroy evil and eliminate its causes. And since he has created morally responsible free agents, he will justly and fairly hold everyone to account for their moral choices and actions. For some, their life experiences may have produced bitterness or badness; for others, it may be that their painful experiences have bettered them.
If you would like a fuller (and better) treatment, try Richard Swinburne’s paper: “The Problem of Evil”
http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/02-03/01w/readings/swinburne-evil.pdf
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:11 pm
On the most basic levels there are trues and falses in mathematics, yes. However, on higher levels things are more fluid, hence why we have algebra and calculus. These things explain that which doesn’t lend to an extreme.
Now, back to the inquiry into the origin of evil. As previously stated you believe evil in a corruption of good. The corruption of good is created through the use of the free will of an individual to choose to corrupt that good. Now, you postulate that libertarian free will is somehow an argument against evil. However, I do not see how free will does anything to explain the existence of evil. If one has the ability to choose between the good and the corruption of good what would make one more inclined to choose the good? The good you speak of is based on a moral choice. The problem is morals are relative to a society. Other than a book that claims itself to be the truth, you have no evidence to show a definitive standard for morality. You believe the book because the book tells you to believe it. This is circular logic. So, without a moral standard how can you even attempt to explain why one would choose good over the corruption of good?
On a personal note, discovering this problem with good and evil years ago I’ve made the attempt to think beyond those concepts. The only two absolutes, through all cultures, I can identify are creation and destruction. I choose those over good and evil, which I see as relative.
October 7th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
i hope you go to hell for making fun for our religion!
October 10th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
How in the hell… NO WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How could someone possibly have the guts to do something like this and then post this shit on the internet!! Who ever did this is going to rot in HELLLL!! I’m not playin’
October 26th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
I don’t know why you would make this picture, whats the point of it. This is a man who truely existed on this earth, weather or not he was actually the son of God doesnt matter personally i believe he is, but this man, based on facts, not just the bible, existed in this world. He was perfect and blameless, never did anything wrong, he healed the sick, and he was crucified, nails in his hands, a spear in his side, a crown of thorns digging into his skull, he was whipped with the cat of nine tales, which is a whip with shards of glass, and rock, and anything else they could find, he suffered so much more then you ever will, and he did it for you. In return you make a mockery of him??? what is wrong with you, if i had done that, i would be so eaten with shame i probably would have killed myself by now had i done that. hope your happy, you’ll probably burn in hell, however thats not my place to judge, neither is it anyone else’s who comments on this forum, thats God’s place to judge
October 26th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Lighten up losers. Religion is meant to be made fun of - especially your silly one that makes fun of science all of the time!
~ and feel free to visit the mohammed cartoon post for how the muslims take it in their stride!
October 27th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
The first reaction to truth is hatred. I believe the hate that the Christians and Muslims both display is evidence of the impotence of their Gods to stop the artists from drawing them or the webmaster from posting them.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
“but this man, based on facts, not just the bible, existed in this world”
As soon as I stop laughing, I am going to want to know one of those “facts” so go ahead and post it now.
November 18th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
ok, im catholic, but you really cant take a joke? anyway, the bible said jesus was hung on the cross naked
November 20th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Lets just forget about all religion and stuff …. Think about this ….
1.Jesus did not sin.
2.He loved every one.
3.He healed everyone who came to him.
You may say he is a fiction but History as well as Science agree on wat de Bible has got to say if u still deny u must be blind.
So by any standard posting such bad things is not nice.
Wat will u do if such things abt u were posted on net?
God knows … But Jesus is ready to forgive u because he loves you … the only person who would lay down His life for u ,just u .
Think about it bro …. Jesus preached only for 3 and a half years and Christianity is the largest religion …. There must be some truth … Think about it …
November 20th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
1. Jesus did not sin = “religion”
2. He loved every one = “religion”
3. He healed everyone who came to him. = “religion”
God knows … But Jesus is ready to forgive u because he loves you … the only person who would lay down His life for u ,just u . = “religion”
Christianity is the largest religion = false
If you don’t consider Catholicism as a type of Christianity then definitely no. If you do, Christianity and Islam are about the same in size, but think of it this way: There are over 15000 different denominations of Christianity. The only about 70 types of Muslim. By that logic Islam is more likely to be right than Christianity due to being more cohesive. In either case, each controls less than a third of the worlds population. Since neither has a majority of the world they cannot, with any truth, claim to be the right one. If either were right they could, in the very least, get a majority of the world.
November 20th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
“You may say he is a fiction but History as well as Science agree on wat de Bible has got to say”
While history does back up some of what the bible has to say, it contradicts just as much or more, I would say. For example, there seems to be no evidence that the Israelites were ever slaves in Egypt. And there is no record of Caeser Augustus calling for a census during his reign.
As for science backing up the bible, please give one example because I would say you’re dead wrong on that assertion.
December 23rd, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Jesus is my life. I find this cartoon offensive, however I wish the person who made it would just know who Jesus is. The difference between Christians and Non-Christians has nothing to do with how often you sin. It simply is that Christians believe that Jesus died for our sins and ask for forgiveness of their sins. There are many Non-Christians that I would say live a better life then me. For those of you who do not know Jesus or even think that he may be real I ask that you give him a chance like I did. Through his love I have changed into a loving person that lives for a purpose, which is to TRY to live a good lifestyle and to give him glory. If you want to know if the bible is true or not, first you must go to church and try to develop a relationship with Jesus. Give him a shot.
December 23rd, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Don, if Jesus is your life, then, sadly, you are living a fiction.
Many of us here have already had the misfortune of having to spend time in church, and we have given Christianity “a shot”. It is plain to see that what Christianity claims regarding the world around us is false. Jesus, as a supposedly divine being, is just one more myth of a primitive people, awaiting the dustbin of history like other god myths before it.
Religion is for the stupid and the gullible, and for those who wish to profit from them.
January 20th, 2009 at 6:45 am
If I can only lay my hands on you…
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
fuck you!! these are not joke!!!you will be in the hell forever….don’t play with religion!
February 13th, 2009 at 12:17 am
ROFL. Religious people make me laugh. It is funny how Christians tell you that you are going to hell when damning someone to hell is a sin. Not even to mention that most of them are cussing in their response… Talk about faith…
February 15th, 2009 at 9:48 am
hey , i dont know what to say but this men on the cross he didnt make any bad to people and he loves us , i dont know why people on earth or some of them hates him ? he didnt say come on lets kill every one in the name of allah or in the name of jihad like the islam ( i respect everyone religion) he said god is love, and no one should fear him because he loves us … he said im here to help sin people im here to love them , and to protect them he didnt say anything bad …
people on earth now said where is god ? we want proof ,, well if u want to hear a music u cant hear it like this u have to go and to turn the radio , and god is like music u have to search on him u have by urself go and ask about him to listen his voice , my dear friend who put this images god will forgive u because he loves u and i u have any question about god and u want to reply add me on my msn : cool_edy_90@hotmail.com
god bless u all
March 15th, 2009 at 4:01 am
fuck crist
March 16th, 2009 at 11:56 am
In before the lock
April 4th, 2009 at 12:35 am
quote: “HAHAHA stupid christians need to take a dose of their own medicine its about damn time”
Wtf?
Do you have any clue what you’re talking about?
to my knowledge, there is no christian church that spends its time drawing pictures of other religions gods giving handjobs to other characters.
nice going.
you just made yourself sound reallly stupid
April 4th, 2009 at 12:38 am
we love jesus
April 4th, 2009 at 3:53 am
Actually at least 15% of the US population identify themselves as atheist or agnostics. Also only 76% consider themselves as christian. So basically you’re full of shit.
Whats a good sign is that 76% is down from 86% only 18 years before.
Source:
http://b27.cc.trincoll.edu/weblogs/AmericanReligionSurvey-ARIS/reports/ARIS_Report_2008.pdf
April 11th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Wow… this is really awesome guys. Like bravo, you managed to take something beautiful and turn it into a junior high laugh-fest. Like, grow up. Christ loves you, and if you don’t realize it, tough luck. I don’t walk around holding crucifixes, and you don’t need to post this stupid crap. Keep it to your own stupid circle of friends, don’t ruin the intelligence of the rest of the world by publicly broadcasting it. Jesus still loves you after this, but you don’t deserve it. I don’t make fun of what you believe in, what gives you the right.
April 12th, 2009 at 6:32 am
Either way everyone looks at it, we will all die. One way or other we will all find out what the truth is. It does no good to debate it, because all it causes are circles. Covering things over and over. If you don’t believe in God, do what was done in the Old Testament with Elijah, and test him. What I do need to say is that regardless of what you believe or don’t believe, you are still lovable. You are still someone worth dying for. Not even just with Jesus dying, but with the men and women in our military dying for you everyday. So as a Christian, I choose to believe in the Bible, and in God. If you don’t then that’s ok. We can’t force you to believe. We also have no place judging you. It’s not my place. People in life are going to do things you don’t like…we just have to deal with it. I think people tend to get saturated with the religion and not pay enough attention to the relationship. But the world isn’t a perfect place and life goes on.
As for the drawings, I find them offensive, but the artists had the right to draw them. It’s their choice and as long as they are alive they will continue to have the liberty to do so. I think obviously anything that is made to make fun of anything is offensive, no matter what it’s making fun of. Again it’s just life and life goes on. Take it with a grain of salt and move on.
There is nothing wrong with debate, it’s a good way to pass time. And clearly Marc and Neando are both educated and are having a very amusing debate, both with good points, and both with research to back up their claims. If anything the debate is far more amusing than the drawings were intended to be.
June 18th, 2009 at 4:27 am
These pics are funny. Yall wanna trip, check out:
my.opera.com/dovish
June 20th, 2009 at 3:39 am
JESUS CHRIST…………. he said: GO. WALT DISNEY………….. he said: “keep moving forward.” ARMANI………….. he said: “If you wish to make something beautiful, use only what is neccessary.” VICTOR HUGO…………… he wrote: “Music expresses that which cannot be said and which is impossible to be slient.” DEAN ALFANGE…………… he wrote: “It is my right to be uncommon- if i can. I seek opportunity-not security. I do not wish to be kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter in centive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guranteed exictence; the thrill of fullfillment to the stale calm of utopia. I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say, “This I have done.”
June 21st, 2009 at 5:37 am
Don’t you think that any insane kind of cult developed on a silly legend about a mentally impaired son of bitch crucifiction is really dangerous for everybody around in the world?
I mean, you can worship any kind of Greek gods fo good, becosue they are goodloking, intelligent and whatewer, and youstill are a normla person.
If you are a son of bitch worshipper, what are you? Probably a mentally sick, ugly degenerated son of bitch maybe?
July 8th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
I am grateful that I am forgiven, made new and have joy and peace within. Many cannot say the same. But you can if you accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
Randy
July 8th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
so an omnipotent god would have known that jesus wouldn’t “die” right? what kind of lame sacrifice is that?
July 8th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Look ignorant retarded asshole, humans have a defective inborn brain structure, which makes them vulnerable to hypnosis during sleep.
This means that all humanity was doomed to die sooner or later. And that is excatly what happened in the last 2000 years.
Nobody goives a fuck about religion any more, and even less would even consider thinking that neture created humans as superior race. as there are way more fucked up communities around th eworld today avaiableto the mentally insane to join.
As the matter of fact today we live in a world where tehre are only religious freaks, criminals, prostitutes, homosexuals, transexuals left on th estreets.
The few norml apeople left are hiding at home. Thanks to th efact that they are intelligent, they contonue to marry between brothers anbd sisters and they are still alaive only becosue of this.
July 10th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Boris, re your post 161, great point and one that isn’t made often enough.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
I’m wondering as to what the point of dieing is if one rises again. If God exists beyond time and is all-powerful why would Jesus need to die, if only to rise again? Seems it was a big waist of time and effort. Couldn’t the mythology work just as well if Jesus jumped through a wormhole in his own asshole and did all the woogy-woogy that way?
July 11th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
1 Actually, the point of resurrection was necver explained properly to the ignorant masses of bigots.
Resurrection of Jesus means a evry simple natural thing, if Jesus was marriend to Maria, their children would carry all of their genetical code, therefore every children is the methaphorical resurrection of parents body and minds.
2 A very useful thing to do is never talk about Jesus as somebody who existed in real life. But only as a very unsucesseful try to create a legend.
There is a very serious difference in english language comprehension about religion, WORSHIP and BELIEVE.
Becosue RE LIGION is made from ignorant idots who cant even peak english properly, they absolutely are unaware of the huge difference about these two words.
Jesus as every educate dperosn knows, os the remake of the Greek Myth of Danko,who sacrificed his life by ripping his own heart form his chest and illuminated th eway for other lost people.
As you see, Danko is a very obvious hint about th eexistence of sadomasochistic degenerates, who were always present on th eGreek terrytory, and were unable to comprehend the basics of legends and myths making.
Danko ripped his own heart - an obvious hint about the sadomasochistic nature of a sick mind of those who invented this useless Greek legend.
Jesus spent all his life making obvious statements, self inflicted sufferings, and at the end was even crucified on a crucifix. This is an obvious reake of the allready sick Danko useless legend.
Please note that even if Danko legend is Greek too, it has nothing to share whatsoever with intelligent and useful original Greek Myths and Lengends containing morale.
On th eocntrary of Greek Mythology, all the perverted and degenertaed wanna be legends of religious freaks, likek Danko and Jesus, are useless for comprehension, and are only full of sick hyper emotivity, which resembles the mental state of prostitutes who were kidnapped in childhood and obviously become mad.
On the contrary of these two mentally insane made up diotic bullshit charchters, there are a couple of real facts that can put light for the mentally impaired, in case they are able to comprehend the reality:
1 Monarchs were not treated as divinity, and were lected by th epeople, therefore every citizen had the right to talk with th emonarch freely if necessarily. Only the bible is treating the monarch figure as somebody scary and godalike. (becouse the jews are all idots.)
2 Criminals were not crucifixed, they were executed instantly bu cutting their heads off. It was a universal execution all around the world. Crucifixion is a religious invention in orde rot scare ignornat people.
August 2nd, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Forgive them my lord they don’t know what they are doing.
August 2nd, 2009 at 7:37 pm
I would say that the thought required to produce this art would require people to know what they are doing…fool…
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:01 am
Dr Rob, you seem to be very knowledgeable about religion and mythology but don’t seem to be able to express it in English. One of the beauties of this forum is that you are free to say anything you like about religion, provided that it is negative of course, and never have to bother to defend it.
August 4th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
what the hell is wrong with you people. The lord jesus christ was crucified to save your immortal souls from damnation because of YOUR SINS, not his. Believe what you want but hell is a very very real place. I could quote bible verses but who would believe that if they don’t believe in God? Understand that what your were taught in history is true. Jesus christ of nazareth was a real matter of fact human being and there were many witnesses to all of his miracles. Including being consumed into heaven from the cross. What these artists are doing is blaspheming my god, your god, the god of abraham and issac. If you don’t believe in god fine but have enough respect for other people and their beliefs however stupid they may be to you to not insult them.
God bless
August 4th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I respect people in general until proven wrong but if you demand respect for ideas, then I no longer respect you.
You demand that all ideas, even abhorrent and evil(slavery, incest, all religions) must be respected and not criticized or are you actually saying that only your ideas must be respected? If so, I respect you even less.
If you even claim that history proves the existence of jesus, then prove it. A historical fact should be easy to prove, yes? If you do not try, my respect towards you falls even more.
But answer me this; If I nail my hand to a wall, it would be stupid, yes? But, if I nail my hand to the wall because I am rewarded very very handsomely for it, it would be stupid not to do it, yes?
What was my sacrifice in the latter case?
August 4th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
you want proof of jesus christ? look in any history book in any high school in america. at least a paragraph or two he is mentioned. i do not demend anything from anyone i simply ask for tolerance for all. agree with me or not its your choice in the end but as much as we may not agree with someone’s ideals we must respect the fact that they are that persons. There is absolutely no sense in bein rude or hateful to anyone for expressing their ideas however stupid they may be to you.
and in the latter case your only sacrifice is your hand. And unless you accept this fact and allow jesus christ into your heart this hand along with the rest of your body will burn eternally in the lake of fire called hell regardless of what your rewards were for putting said nail through your hand
August 9th, 2009 at 9:43 am
If you’d read farther into your history book you’d also know the story of Jesus is parroted from earlier cultures. Just because a man named Jesus from Nazareth preached of a New Testament doesn’t mean he was the Chocolate Zombie Jesus you believe in.
August 9th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Hey, this works again.
I tolerate you up until you encroach upon my life with hateful messages with value judgments based on tribal myths of which you blatantly ignore the parts affecting you.
Well, I did open up a history book on a school level and you know what?
Robin Hood and King Arthur are true, they are mentioned in a history book. AS were Odysseus, Zeus, Hera, Tiamat, Marduk, Anubis, Geb, Uzume, Amaterazu, Ah Puch, Akna, Mami Wata and Shango to just name a few. There is a plethora of real gods in existence.
Assuming of course that mention in a history book equates existence and divinity on gods. So my enthusiasm over all the new found gods is thus crushed under the reality.
Mere mention that a certain myth caused particular organization to appear does not validate the original myth as a fact even if the followers would believe it to be true. Using belief as basis for reality makes Santa Claus to be true as children believe in him, neh?
And once again the utter ridiculousness of the claimed sacrifice of jesus is not a concept that people understand even with more down to earth examples. So, lets start again.
Jesus is god.
God cannot die.
Thus jesus could not have died nor made a sacrifice.
Assuming jesus died and took all of your sins with the claimed sacrifice.
Punishment for sin is Hell.
Jesus is not in hell.
Thus no sacrifice took place.
Assuming jesus was in hell until resurrection.
Three days is not comparable to eternity.
Thus jesus did not make any real sacrifice worth mentioning.
August 9th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
“Jesus is god.
God cannot die.
Thus jesus could not have died nor made a sacrifice.”
Unless God/Jesus became man, and acquired the attributes of the human body, one of which being death.
“Assuming jesus died and took all of your sins with the claimed sacrifice.
Punishment for sin is Hell.
Jesus is not in hell.
Thus no sacrifice took place.”
There is only one “sin” that can actually send you to Hell, and that being the “sin” of unbelief. Hell is the punishment for unbelief. The punishment for general sin is death, not hell. “The wages of sin is death…” The only problem is, most people don’t choose to open the sacrificial gift that has been set before them.
“Assuming jesus was in hell until resurrection.
Three days is not comparable to eternity.
Thus jesus did not make any real sacrifice worth mentioning.”
This last point is made irrelevant by the previous fact that Jesus was not required to, and did not, go to Hell. But-
-time is not relevant to God.
nicole, you made some pretty good comments. Keep up the good work. :)
“Believe what you want but hell is a very very real place.”
“I could quote bible verses but who would believe that if they don’t believe in God?”
“And unless you accept this fact and allow jesus christ into your heart this hand along with the rest of your body will burn eternally in the lake of fire called hell…”
August 12th, 2009 at 8:46 am
D, your statements about hell just exemplify how nasty and vicious your fictional deity of your Christian fairy tales is.
Now, regarding any claimed “sacrifice”, answer this question briefly, just yes or no: Do you believe that your god is omnipotent?
Religion is a disease of the mind. Inoculate against it with reason.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Just posting these pictures won’t make any bad thing against GOD.
You are just wasting your time. GOD won’t even think u as a problem.
As you are throwing self into ditch. No one Gonna worry 4 your actions. as you are going to suffer in future.
Amen..
August 13th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Way to miss the point, Rajkumar. RTFA.
“GOD” is hardly the intended audience. And your proof of the authors’ future suffering is?
For the U of Oregon audience of The Insurgent, a more appropriate salutation is,
Ramen..
August 13th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Korgan. Yes. Please continue.
August 14th, 2009 at 9:23 am
And being omnipotent, your purported “god” has the power to create any number of beings, and to destroy them, and furthermore, has the power to undo its doings.
Correct?
August 15th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Korgan, post 179.
—
Correct, but-
When you say “…has the power to undo it’s doings” I’m assuming that “it” refers to the god’s doing, right? Or the beings doing?
—
Korgan, since I know you were so concerned about my painful headache, I just want to tell you i’m okay. >:)
Except, just as you “predicted”, a random kid(he looked 12-14) in a parking lot threw a ROTTEN egg up in the air and hit me in the right on the head yesterday. I can still smell it, bleh.
—
Please continue.
August 20th, 2009 at 2:52 am
Korgan, should there actually be an omnipotent vicious and nasty deity that meets your conception of the God of Christianity, would that be a moral problem for you or merely an uncomfortable unpleasant emotional one?
Also, do you have a coherent conception of what omnipotence would entail?
November 7th, 2009 at 11:11 am
We all here pray for Korgan himself will meet & proof about God one day.. Jesus loves you Korgan..
I myself a christian, but truly in the past not really sure about the evidence & existence of God Jesus..until I had a dream, I was visited by my grandma in my dream one night after her death one month.. I asked her: how she could come to me in my bedroom? She gave me surprising answers: “I just get permission from God to go down to visit you..”
I asked her: “Is your current living place nice?” She replied: “Sure..it’s very nice.. Remember..our faith have to stay within Jesus as we believe. He’s real..I’ve already come to heaven..it’s such a really wonderful place I’ve ever been.. so different from the place of unbelievers, their place is most horrible..”
Then I wake up and cried deeply realizing that Lord Jesus is really existing so close to us..He’s really in Heaven.. according to the messages of my grandma in my dream, there are a Real Heaven & A Real Hell..
God loves u all
November 7th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Vivi, save your useless prayers and dream stories, and do some thinking and some critical examination of your idiotic, violent superstition instead.
Your dream story is unwitnessed and unproven. If your god that you claim “loves” us is real and as described by you, then let’s see you pray to have all the illnesses in the world (which your asshole-god would have created, to begin with, according to your fiction) be cured, now.
It’s a damn good thing that the god you worship does not exist. According to your idiotic bible, your god as described is merely a vicious, vengeful asshole. Start here for some great reading on that subject.
Then go here:
http://www.reasonproject.org/
and do some more reading about your delusion.
Take your awful god-asshole fiction and shove it. The world has suffered enough already from the Christian myth.
Religion is a disease of the mind. Inoculate against it with reason.
November 7th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I have to disagree with you, Vivi.
I do not believe the Lord gives us “visions” to prove himself, as the Christian life is by faith. I believe what you had was merely a random dream.
I sometimes have dreams in which my grandmother is not dead, but they simply mean that I have been thinking about her often.
You don’t need to base your hopes on a random, meaningless dream.
November 7th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Hi Vivi, I would like to warn you that communicating with the dead is dangerous business, please my friend don’t believe in it. The bible says that dead people stay asleep until the resurrection. Demons pose as people’s deceased loved ones in order to deceive the living into disobeying God’s commands.
Even some of the scientific theories that are presented as facts, has their origins in hocus pocus.
“It’s very easy to get caught in a web of deceit when we dabble in the spirit world—even though the Bible plainly warns us that the dead cannot actually speak to us. Some of the biggest lies in today’s world are a result of just a few people believing what a spirit told them. Eve listened to a snake, and we all paid for it. Swedenborg listened to a shadowy visitor in his room one night, and only eternity will tell how many people will have to pay a heavy price for what he did.
You know, there’s a really good reason God says that some knowledge is strictly forbidden. It’s because He loves you too much to let you build your life on a lie. We don’t need psychics or spirit mediums to figure out what to do with our lives, because we have a Heavenly Father who loves us enough to give us the straight goods in a Book that a lot of people haven’t read in quite a while.
You know, there’s always a good reason that God tells us to rely on Him instead of what other people say …”
See the following :- http://www.itiswritten.com/tvprogram/episode/2009/11/1100
………………………………………
D, I’m glad to see you’re OK :)
November 7th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Allycrap alert! Allycrap alert! Allycrap alert!
Ally, stop spewing your absurd bible crap about that asshole of a god that you worship. The absurdity of your religion is plain to see, and as usual, Skeptics does a fine job of showing just how far wrong the xtian bible is, and how the absurd (and fortunately fictional) god that the bible describes would simply be a vengeful, cruel ASSHOLE rather than a reliever of suffering, if such a being actually existed. See here
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/nt_list.html
and here are a few examples to shield us from the stench of ally’s crap:
Genesis
# “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
God purposefully designed a system that ensures the suffering and death of all his creatures, parasite and host, predator and prey.
# The Genesis 1 creation account conflicts with the order of events that are known to science. In Genesis, the earth is created before light and stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants before any animals. The order of events known from science is just the opposite. 1:1-2:3
# God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day. Yet he didn’t make the light producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day (1:14-19). And how could there be “the evening and the morning” on the first day if there was no sun to mark them? 1:3-5
# God spends one-sixth of his entire creative effort (the second day) working on a solid firmament. This strange structure, which God calls heaven, is intended to separate the higher waters from the lower waters. 1:6-8
# Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes (1:14-19). 1:11
# God lets “the earth bring forth” the plants, rather than creating them directly. Maybe Genesis is not so anti-evolution after all. 1:11
# In an apparent endorsement of astrology, God places the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament so that they can be used “for signs”. This, of course, is exactly what astrologers do: read “the signs” in the Zodiac in an effort to predict what will happen on Earth. 1:14
# God makes two lights: “the greater light [the sun] to rule the day, and the lesser light [the moon] to rule the night.” But the moon is not a light, but only reflects light from the sun. And why, if God made the moon to “rule the night”, does it spend half of its time moving through the daytime sky? 1:16
# “He made the stars also.” God spends a day making light (before making the stars) and separating light from darkness; then, at the end of a hard day’s work, and almost as an afterthought, he makes the trillions of stars. 1:16
# “And God set them [the stars] in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.” 1:17
# In verse 11, God “let the earth bring forth” the plants. Now he has the earth “bring forth” the animals as well. So maybe the creationists have it all wrong. Maybe God created livings things through the process of evolution. 1:24
# God gave humans dominion over every other living thing on earth. 1:26
# God commands us to “be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over … every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” 1:28
# “I have given you every herb … and every tree … for meat.”
Since many plants have evolved poisons to protect against animals that would like to eat them, God’s advice is more than a little reckless. Would you tell your children to go out in the garden and eat whatever plants they encounter? Of course not. But then, you are much nicer and smarter than God. 1:29
# All animals were originally herbivores. Tapeworms, vampire bats, mosquitoes, and barracudas — all were strict vegetarians, as they were created by God. 1:30
# “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” He purposefully designed a system that ensures the suffering and death of all his creatures, parasite and host, predator and prey. 1:31
# In Genesis 1 the entire creation takes 6 days, but the universe is at least 12 billion years old, with new stars constantly being formed. 1:31
# Humans were not created instantaneously from dust and breath, but evolved over millions of years from simpler life forms. 2:7
# After making the animals, God has Adam name them all. The naming of several million species must have kept Adam busy for a while. 2:18-22
# God fashions a woman out of one of Adam’s ribs.
Because of this story, it was commonly believed (and sometimes it is still said today) that males have one less rib than females. When Vesalius showed in 1543 that the number of ribs was the same in males and females, it created a storm of controversy. 2:19
# God curses the serpent. From now on the serpent will crawl on his belly and eat dust. One wonders how he got around before — by hopping on his tail, perhaps? But snakes don’t eat dust, do they? 3:14
# Because Adam listened to Eve, God cursed the ground and causes thorns and thistles to grow. Before this, according to the (false) Genesis story, plants had no natural defenses. The rose had no thorn, cacti were spineless, holly leaves were smooth, and the nettle had no sting. Foxgloves, oleander, and milkweeds were all perfectly safe to eat. 3:17-18
# When Lamech was born, nine generations were alive at once. Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, and Lamech were all alive at the time of Lamech’s birth. Adam lived to see his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson. 5:25
# “There were giants in the earth in those days.” 6:4
# Noah is told to make an ark that is 450 feet long. 6:14-15
# Whether by twos or by sevens, Noah takes male and female representatives from each species of “every thing that creepeth upon the earth.” 7:8
# God opens the “windows of heaven.” He does this every time it rains. 7:11
# All of the animals boarded the ark “in the selfsame day.” 7:13-14
# The flood covered the highest mountain tops (Mount Everest?) with fifteen cubits to spare. 7:20
# “The windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained.” This happens whenever it stops raining. 8:2
# Noah sends a dove out to see if there was any dry land. But the dove returns without finding any. Then, just seven days later, the dove goes out again and returns with an olive leaf. But how could an olive tree survive the flood? And if any seeds happened to survive, they certainly wouldn’t germinate and grow leaves within a seven day period. 8:8-11
# When the animals left the ark, what would they have eaten? There would have been no plants after the ground had been submerged for nearly a year. What would the carnivores have eaten? Whatever prey they ate would have gone extinct. And how did the New World primates or the Australian marsupials find their way back after the flood subsided? 8:19
# “And the Lord smelled a sweet savor.”
Noah kills the “clean beasts” and burns their dead bodies for God. According to 7:8 this would have caused the extinction of all “clean” animals since only two of each were taken onto the ark. 8:20-21
# “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” Although this would have been good advice for the mythical Noah, it is deadly advice for humankind as a whole. Overpopulation is one of our greatest problems, yet there is nothing in the bible to address it. 9:1
# According to this verse, all animals fear humans. Although it is true that many do, it is also true that some do not. Sharks and grizzly bears, for example, are generally much less afraid of us than we are of them. 9:2
# “Into your hand are they (the animals) delivered.”
God gave the animals to humans, and they can do whatever they please with them. This verse has been used by bible believers to justify all kinds of cruelty to animals and environmental destruction. 9:2
# God is rightly filled with remorse for having killed his creatures. He even puts the rainbow in the sky to remind himself of his promise to the animals not to do it again. But rainbows are caused by the nature of light, the refractive index of water, and the shape of raindrops. There were rainbows billions of years before humans existed. 9:13
# Some creationists believe that this verse refers to continental drift, which, they say, began to occur during the days of Pelag (which means “division”), about 100 or so years after the flood. But many other creationists disagree. 10:25
# “The whole earth was of one language.” But this could not be true, since by this time (around 2400 BCE) there were already many languages, each unintelligible to the others. 11:1, 6
# “Now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
God worries that people could build a tower high enough to reach him (them?) in heaven, and that by so doing they will become omnipotent. 11:4-6
# According to the Tower of Babel story, the many human languages were created instantaneously by God. But actually the various languages evolved gradually over long periods of time. 11:9
# The ridiculously long lives of the patriarchs. 11:10-32
# “Abram … pursued them unto Dan.”
This is an obvious anachronism, since the city of Dan was not named “Dan” until the time of the Judges (see Judges 18:29). In fact, Dan (for whom the city was named) was not even born yet (see Genesis 30:6). 14:14
# “And they returned to the land of the Philistines.” But the Philistines didn’t arrive in the region of Canaan until around 1200 BCE — 800 years after Abraham’s supposed migration from Ur. 21:32, 26:1, 8, 15, 18
# Laban learns “by experience” that God has blessed him for Jacob’s sake. “By experience” means “by divination”, at least that is how most other versions translate this verse. 30:27
# Jacob displays his (and God’s) knowledge of biology by having goats copulate while looking at streaked rods. The result is streaked baby goats. 30:37-39
# God (or an angel) praises Jacob for his fancy genetic work in Gen.30:37-39. 31:11-12
# Joseph and his magic divining cup. 44:5, 44:15
Exodus
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than ten days. 16:35
# The Israelite population went from 70 (or 75) to several million in a few hundred years. 1:5,7, 12:37, 38:26
# Why are some people born with disabilities? Because God deliberately makes them that way. 4:11
# God killed Egyptians and their livestock by smashing them with huge hailstones mixed with fire. 9:24
# God led the Israelites through the land of the Philistines, hundreds of years before the Philistines were established in Canaan. 13:17
# If you do what God says, he won’t send his diseases on you (like he did to the Egyptians). But otherwise…. 15:26
# “The manna referred to in the Bible, in Exodus 16:14, seems to have been the dried excrement of Trabutina mannipara, a scale insect that feeds on tamarisk trees.” Benjamin B. Normark, The Sex Lives of Scales, Natural History, Sept. 2004. 16:14-15
# A magical trumpet played loud while God came down in smoke, fire, and earthquakes onto Mt. Sinai. 19:16-18
# “In six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them.”
Believers often say that the “days” of creation should be taken allegorically, but this verse is quite clear. God created the universe in six 24 hour days. 20:11
Leviticus
# The bible says that hares and coneys are unclean because they “chew the cud” but do not part the hoof. But hares and coneys are not ruminants and they do not “chew the cud.” 11:5-6
# Bats are birds to the biblical God. 11:13, 19
# Four-legged fowls are abominations. 11:20
# Be sure to watch out for those “other flying creeping things which have four feet.” (I wish God wouldn’t get so technical!) I guess he must mean four-legged insects. You’d think that since God made the insects, and so many of them (at least several million species), that he would know how many legs they have! 11:23
# God’s law for lepers: Get two birds. Kill one. Dip the live bird in the blood of the dead one. Sprinkle the blood on the leper seven times, and then let the blood-soaked bird fly off. Next find a lamb and kill it. Wipe some of its blood on the patient’s right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle seven times with oil and wipe some of the oil on his right ear, thumb and big toe. Repeat. Finally kill a couple doves and offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. 14:2-52
Numbers
# The Israelite population went from seventy (Ex.1:5) to several million (over 600,000 adult males) in just a few generations! 1:45-46
# When the tabernacle was set up, it was covered by a cloud during the day and by fire all night. 9:15
# God led the Israelites from one camp to the other with a cloud. When the cloud stopped and rested someplace, the Israelites pitched their tents. When the cloud started moving again, the Israelites followed it. 9:16-23
# God sends quails to feed his people until they were “two cubits [about a meter] high upon the face of the earth.” Taking the “face of the earth” to be a circle with a radius of say 30 kilometers (an approximate day’s journey), this would amount to 3 trillion (3×1012) liters of quails. At 2 quails per liter, this would provide a couple million quails for each of several million people. 11:31
# God strikes Miriam with leprosy. (In the Bible, leprosy is caused by the wrath of God or the malice of Satan. 12:10
# “They … cut down … a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff.”
A single cluster of grapes was so heavy that it took two men to carry it. I guess that’s what you’d expect, though, since they were in the land of giants. (See verses 32-33.) 13:23
# “And there we saw the giants … And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” This statement may have been figurative, hyperbole, typical biblical exaggeration, or an actual description of the sons of Anak, in which case they must have been about 100 meters tall. These are the same giants (the Nephilium) that resulted when the “sons of God” mated with “the daughters of men in Gen.6:4. Of course these superhuman god-men should have been destroyed in the flood. So what are they doing still alive? 13:33
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than a few weeks. 14:33, 32:13
# God’s cure for snakebite: a brass serpent on a pole. 21:8
# God has “the strength of a unicorn.” Oh heck, I bet he’s even stronger than a unicorn. 23:22, 24:8
# “He made them wander in the wilderness forty years.”
It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than a few weeks. 32:13
Deuteronomy
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more a few weeks. 2:7, 8:2, 29:5
# “A land of giants: giants dwelt therein in old time.” (They must have been much more common back then.) 2:10-11, 20-21
# Og, the king of the giants, was a tall man, even by NBA standards. His bed measured 9 by 4 cubits (13.5 feet long and 6 feet wide). 3:11
# God promises to cast out seven nations including the Amorites, Canaanites, and the Jebusites. But he was unable to fulfill his promise. These nations were “greater and mightier” than the Israelites, who according to Ex.12:37 and Num.1:45-46 already had numbered several million. So the region, according to the bible, must have had a population of more than twenty million! 7:1
# This verse mistakenly says that the hare chews its cud. 14:7-8
# To the biblical God, a bat is just an another unclean bird. 14:11, 18
# “And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.” 28:23
# “The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.” 28:24
# “An eagle … beareth them on her wings.”
Do eagles carry their young on their wings? I know of no evidence (except for the single anecdote provided here) that they do. 32:11
# “Their wine is the poison of dragons.” I wonder what genus and species the bible is referring to when it mentions dragons. 32:33
# Joseph’s “horns are like the horns of a unicorn.” 33:17
Joshua
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than ten days. 5:6
# Joshua says that those who try to rebuild Jericho will be accursed by God, and will have to sacrifice both their oldest and their youngest sons in its construction. Well, Jericho still exists today, and is often considered to be the world’s oldest, continuously occupied city. 6:26
# In Joshua 8 the Israelites destroy Ai and make it a desolate heap. But Ai was an abandoned city by the time of the Israelites and this story is a myth invented to explain the ruins of an ancient city that the Israelites encountered. See Archaeology and Biblical Accuracy by Farrell Till. 8:1-29
# This verse says that Ai was never again occupied after it was destroyed by Joshua. But Nehemiah (7:32) lists it among the cities of Israel at the time of the Babylonian captivity. 8:28
# In a divine type of daylight savings time, God makes the sun stand still so that Joshua can get all his killing done before dark. 10:12-13
# “And the coast of Og king of Bashan, which as of the remnant of the giants….” 12:4, 18:6
Judges
# “The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” Unless astrology is true, how can the stars affect the outcome of a battle? 5:20
# “As the sun … goeth forth in his might.” The sun, according to the bible, goes around the earth. 5:31
Ruth (None)
1 Samuel
# “The pillars of the earth are the LORD’s, and he hath set the world upon them. 2:8
# “So Samuel called unto the LORD; and the LORD sent thunder and rain.” 12:18
# After Jonathan’s first slaughter (20 men in one half acre), God showed his approval with “a very great trembling.” 14:15
# Goliath was ten feet tall (”six cubits and a span”). 17:4
2 Samuel
# “He weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels.”
Absalom’s hair was heavy upon him 14:25-26
# In what is surely a biblical exaggeration, we are told that “the servants of David” killed 20,000 soldiers in one day. And that “the wood [forest] devoured more people that day than the sword devoured.” It must have been spooky forest to have devoured more than 20,000 soldiers. 18:7-8
# A giant with six fingers and six toes. 21:20
# “There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth.”
What happens when God gets mad? The earth shakes, the foundations of heaven move, smoke comes out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth.”22:8-9
# “The foundations of the world were discovered … at the blast of the breath of his nostrils.” 22:16
# How many soldiers did Israel have? This verse says that Judah and Israel had a total of 1,300,000 fighting men (1 Chr.21:5 says 1,570,000) in this battle. Of course, this is a ridiculously high number for a battle between two tribal armies in 1000 BCE. (The United States had about 1.37 million active duty soldiers in 2001.) 24:9
1 Kings
# This verse implies that the value of p is 3. (The actual value is approximately 3.14159.)
Good Math, Bad Math: Innumerate Fundamentalists and ?
7:23
# God creates droughts by causing “heaven to shut up” as a punishment for sin. 8:35
# Ever the playful spirit, God withers, and then restores, the hand of king Jeroboam. 13:4
# God passes by and causes a great wind, earthquake, fire, and a little voice. (God was in the little voice.) 19:11-12
2 Kings
# Lehi prayed and pillar of fire appeared out of nowhere on a rock. 1:6
# God sends two bears to rip up 42 little children for making fun of Elisha’s bald head. 2:23-24
# Elisha restores the life of a dead child, but only after laying on him a couple of times, putting his mouth on the child’s mouth, his eyes on the child’s eyes, and his hands on the child’s hands. Finally, the child responds by sneezing seven times.
Was this a miraculous healing or artificial respiration? 4:32-35
# Elisha cures a leper, but only after the leper dips himself seven times in the Jordan. 5:14
# Elisha not only can cure leprosy, he can also dish it out. Here he makes his servant (Gehazi) and all his descendants lepers forever. 5:27
# A dead body is brought to life when it accidentally touches the bones of Elisha. 13:21
# “So, king of Egypt”
There was no king of Egypt of the time named “So” or with any similar name. 17:4
# Take a lump of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered.” 20:7
# Isaiah, with a little help from God, makes the sun move backwards ten degrees. Now that’s quite a trick. All at once, the earth stopped spinning and then reversed its direction of rotation. Or maybe the sun traveled around the earth in those days! 20:11
1 Chronicles
# Some creationists believe that this verse (and Gen.10:25) refers to continental drift, which, they say, began to occur during the days of Pelag (which means “division”), about 100 or so years after the flood. 1:19
# “The earth … shall be stable, that it be not moved.” It doesn’t spin on its axis or travel about the sun. 16:30
# According to this verse David’s army had 1,100,000 men from Israel and 470,000 men from Judah, Of course, this numbers is ridiculously high for a battle between two tribal armies in 1000 BCE. (The United States had about 1.37 million active duty soldiers in 2001.) 21:5 David provides Solomon with a fantastically large amount of gold and silver with which to build the temple: 100,000 talents of gold and 1,000,000 talents of silver. Since a talent was about 60 pounds, this would be about 3,000 tons of gold and 30,000 tons of silver. 22:14
# King David collects ten thousand drams (or darics) for the construction of the temple in Jerusalem. This is especially interesting since darics were coins named after King Darius I who lived some five hundred years after David. 29:7
# As usual, the reported amounts of gold, silver, and iron are grossly exaggerated. (5000 talents of gold, for example, would be about 150,000 kilograms, which would be worth about 4.2 billion US dollars in today’s market.) 29:7
2 Chronicles
# Since the molten sea was round with a diameter of ten cubits and a circumference of thirty cubits, we know that the biblical value of p is 3. (The actual value is approximately 3.14159.) 4:2
# Abijah spoke to 1,200,000 soldiers at one time. (He had a really loud voice.) 13:3-4
# 500,000 soldiers die in a single God-assisted slaughter. 13:16-17
# In the largest single God-assisted massacre in the bible, Asa, with God’s help, kills one million Ethiopians. 14:8-14
# Asa, when he had a foot disease, went to physicians instead of seeking the Lord. (God disapproves of those who seek medical help rather than “seeking the Lord.”) 16:12
# God makes Uzziah a leper for burning incense without a license. 26:19-21
Ezra
# In the house of the rolls … in Babylon” This is the only library building mentioned in the Bible. The author mistakenly thought that Media was a part of Babylon. 6:1-2
Nehemiah (None)
Esther
# “Haman thought in his heart.” Most people think with their heads, but biblical folks think with their hearts. 6:6
Job
# The earth rests upon pillars and doesn’t move (unless God gets angry or something). 9:6
# “Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not.”
The earth is fixed and the sun travels about it. 9:7
# “The measure thereof is longer than the earth.”
(What is the length of a sphere?) 11:9
# Heaven is set upon pillars that tremble when God gets mad. 26:11
# “By the breath of God frost is given.” 37:10
# The earth is set on foundations and it does not move. 38:4-6
# “That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it.”
God could (if he wanted to) pick up the earth by its ends and shake all the wicked people off of it.
38:13
# God has snow and hail all stored up to use later “in time of trouble. 38:22
# God spread out the sky, which is a solid structure, hard and strong like a mirror. 37:18
# Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion?”
God seems pleased to have created prey for lions and ravens to eat. 38:39-41
# Ostriches are not cruel and stupid birds who abandon their eggs to die after laying them, as these verses imply. They are, in fact, careful and attentive parents. The male scoops out a hollow for the eggs, which are incubated by the female during the day and the male at night. After the eggs are hatched, they are cared for by the mother for over a month, at which time the chicks can keep up with running adults. 39:13-16
# The bible is wrong about ostriches being cruel and inattentive parents (39:13-16). But if they were, whose fault would it be? Why would God deprive them of the tools that are needed to do the job right? 39:17
# “The eagle … seeketh the prey…. Her young ones suck up blood.”
God is pleased with the way that predators kill and devour their prey. 39:27-30
# Bible believers have identified the behemoth as a hippopotamus, dinosaur, wildebeest, or crocodile. But my favorite is the way these verses are translated by Stephen Mitchell: “Look now: the Beast that I made: he eats grass like a bull. Look: the power in his thighs, the pulsing sinews of his belly. His penis stiffens like a pine; his testicles bulge with vigor.” 40:15-16
# “Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord?” 41:1-34
# “His [the leviathan's] teeth are terrible round about.”
God has equipped predators with teeth that tear the flesh of their prey. 41:14
Psalms
# “The righteous God trieth the hearts and reins.”
Jesus will search your kidneys 7:9
# “My reins also instruct me in the night seasons.”
Jesus will search your kidneys 16:7
# The earth shakes whenever God really gets mad. 18:7
# “The foundations of the world were discovered … at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.” (The earth is set on firm foundations and does not move — unless God blows his nose.) 18:15
# The sun moves around the earth. 19:4-6
Religion is for the ignorant, the gullible, and the stupid, and for those who would profit from them.
November 7th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Allycrap alert! Allycrap alert! Allycrap alert!
Ally, stop spewing your absurd bible crap about that asshole of a god that you worship. The absurdity of your religion is plain to see, and as usual, Skeptics does a fine job of showing just how far wrong the xtian bible is, and how the absurd (and fortunately fictional) god that the bible describes would simply be a vengeful, cruel ASSHOLE rather than a reliever of suffering, if such a being actually existed. See here
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/nt_list.html
and here are a few examples to shield us from the stench of ally’s crap:
Genesis
# “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
God purposefully designed a system that ensures the suffering and death of all his creatures, parasite and host, predator and prey.
# The Genesis 1 creation account conflicts with the order of events that are known to science. In Genesis, the earth is created before light and stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants before any animals. The order of events known from science is just the opposite. 1:1-2:3
# God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day. Yet he didn’t make the light producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day (1:14-19). And how could there be “the evening and the morning” on the first day if there was no sun to mark them? 1:3-5
# God spends one-sixth of his entire creative effort (the second day) working on a solid firmament. This strange structure, which God calls heaven, is intended to separate the higher waters from the lower waters. 1:6-8
# Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes (1:14-19). 1:11
# God lets “the earth bring forth” the plants, rather than creating them directly. Maybe Genesis is not so anti-evolution after all. 1:11
# In an apparent endorsement of astrology, God places the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament so that they can be used “for signs”. This, of course, is exactly what astrologers do: read “the signs” in the Zodiac in an effort to predict what will happen on Earth. 1:14
# God makes two lights: “the greater light [the sun] to rule the day, and the lesser light [the moon] to rule the night.” But the moon is not a light, but only reflects light from the sun. And why, if God made the moon to “rule the night”, does it spend half of its time moving through the daytime sky? 1:16
# “He made the stars also.” God spends a day making light (before making the stars) and separating light from darkness; then, at the end of a hard day’s work, and almost as an afterthought, he makes the trillions of stars. 1:16
# “And God set them [the stars] in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.” 1:17
# In verse 11, God “let the earth bring forth” the plants. Now he has the earth “bring forth” the animals as well. So maybe the creationists have it all wrong. Maybe God created livings things through the process of evolution. 1:24
# God gave humans dominion over every other living thing on earth. 1:26
# God commands us to “be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over … every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” 1:28
# “I have given you every herb … and every tree … for meat.”
Since many plants have evolved poisons to protect against animals that would like to eat them, God’s advice is more than a little reckless. Would you tell your children to go out in the garden and eat whatever plants they encounter? Of course not. But then, you are much nicer and smarter than God. 1:29
# All animals were originally herbivores. Tapeworms, vampire bats, mosquitoes, and barracudas — all were strict vegetarians, as they were created by God. 1:30
# “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” He purposefully designed a system that ensures the suffering and death of all his creatures, parasite and host, predator and prey. 1:31
# In Genesis 1 the entire creation takes 6 days, but the universe is at least 12 billion years old, with new stars constantly being formed. 1:31
# Humans were not created instantaneously from dust and breath, but evolved over millions of years from simpler life forms. 2:7
# After making the animals, God has Adam name them all. The naming of several million species must have kept Adam busy for a while. 2:18-22
# God fashions a woman out of one of Adam’s ribs.
Because of this story, it was commonly believed (and sometimes it is still said today) that males have one less rib than females. When Vesalius showed in 1543 that the number of ribs was the same in males and females, it created a storm of controversy. 2:19
# God curses the serpent. From now on the serpent will crawl on his belly and eat dust. One wonders how he got around before — by hopping on his tail, perhaps? But snakes don’t eat dust, do they? 3:14
# Because Adam listened to Eve, God cursed the ground and causes thorns and thistles to grow. Before this, according to the (false) Genesis story, plants had no natural defenses. The rose had no thorn, cacti were spineless, holly leaves were smooth, and the nettle had no sting. Foxgloves, oleander, and milkweeds were all perfectly safe to eat. 3:17-18
# When Lamech was born, nine generations were alive at once. Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, and Lamech were all alive at the time of Lamech’s birth. Adam lived to see his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson. 5:25
# “There were giants in the earth in those days.” 6:4
# Noah is told to make an ark that is 450 feet long. 6:14-15
# Whether by twos or by sevens, Noah takes male and female representatives from each species of “every thing that creepeth upon the earth.” 7:8
# God opens the “windows of heaven.” He does this every time it rains. 7:11
# All of the animals boarded the ark “in the selfsame day.” 7:13-14
# The flood covered the highest mountain tops (Mount Everest?) with fifteen cubits to spare. 7:20
# “The windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained.” This happens whenever it stops raining. 8:2
# Noah sends a dove out to see if there was any dry land. But the dove returns without finding any. Then, just seven days later, the dove goes out again and returns with an olive leaf. But how could an olive tree survive the flood? And if any seeds happened to survive, they certainly wouldn’t germinate and grow leaves within a seven day period. 8:8-11
# When the animals left the ark, what would they have eaten? There would have been no plants after the ground had been submerged for nearly a year. What would the carnivores have eaten? Whatever prey they ate would have gone extinct. And how did the New World primates or the Australian marsupials find their way back after the flood subsided? 8:19
# “And the Lord smelled a sweet savor.”
Noah kills the “clean beasts” and burns their dead bodies for God. According to 7:8 this would have caused the extinction of all “clean” animals since only two of each were taken onto the ark. 8:20-21
# “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” Although this would have been good advice for the mythical Noah, it is deadly advice for humankind as a whole. Overpopulation is one of our greatest problems, yet there is nothing in the bible to address it. 9:1
# According to this verse, all animals fear humans. Although it is true that many do, it is also true that some do not. Sharks and grizzly bears, for example, are generally much less afraid of us than we are of them. 9:2
# “Into your hand are they (the animals) delivered.”
God gave the animals to humans, and they can do whatever they please with them. This verse has been used by bible believers to justify all kinds of cruelty to animals and environmental destruction. 9:2
# God is rightly filled with remorse for having killed his creatures. He even puts the rainbow in the sky to remind himself of his promise to the animals not to do it again. But rainbows are caused by the nature of light, the refractive index of water, and the shape of raindrops. There were rainbows billions of years before humans existed. 9:13
# Some creationists believe that this verse refers to continental drift, which, they say, began to occur during the days of Pelag (which means “division”), about 100 or so years after the flood. But many other creationists disagree. 10:25
# “The whole earth was of one language.” But this could not be true, since by this time (around 2400 BCE) there were already many languages, each unintelligible to the others. 11:1, 6
# “Now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
God worries that people could build a tower high enough to reach him (them?) in heaven, and that by so doing they will become omnipotent. 11:4-6
# According to the Tower of Babel story, the many human languages were created instantaneously by God. But actually the various languages evolved gradually over long periods of time. 11:9
# The ridiculously long lives of the patriarchs. 11:10-32
# “Abram … pursued them unto Dan.”
This is an obvious anachronism, since the city of Dan was not named “Dan” until the time of the Judges (see Judges 18:29). In fact, Dan (for whom the city was named) was not even born yet (see Genesis 30:6). 14:14
# “And they returned to the land of the Philistines.” But the Philistines didn’t arrive in the region of Canaan until around 1200 BCE — 800 years after Abraham’s supposed migration from Ur. 21:32, 26:1, 8, 15, 18
# Laban learns “by experience” that God has blessed him for Jacob’s sake. “By experience” means “by divination”, at least that is how most other versions translate this verse. 30:27
# Jacob displays his (and God’s) knowledge of biology by having goats copulate while looking at streaked rods. The result is streaked baby goats. 30:37-39
# God (or an angel) praises Jacob for his fancy genetic work in Gen.30:37-39. 31:11-12
# Joseph and his magic divining cup. 44:5, 44:15
Exodus
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than ten days. 16:35
# The Israelite population went from 70 (or 75) to several million in a few hundred years. 1:5,7, 12:37, 38:26
# Why are some people born with disabilities? Because God deliberately makes them that way. 4:11
# God killed Egyptians and their livestock by smashing them with huge hailstones mixed with fire. 9:24
# God led the Israelites through the land of the Philistines, hundreds of years before the Philistines were established in Canaan. 13:17
# If you do what God says, he won’t send his diseases on you (like he did to the Egyptians). But otherwise…. 15:26
# “The manna referred to in the Bible, in Exodus 16:14, seems to have been the dried excrement of Trabutina mannipara, a scale insect that feeds on tamarisk trees.” Benjamin B. Normark, The Sex Lives of Scales, Natural History, Sept. 2004. 16:14-15
# A magical trumpet played loud while God came down in smoke, fire, and earthquakes onto Mt. Sinai. 19:16-18
# “In six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them.”
Believers often say that the “days” of creation should be taken allegorically, but this verse is quite clear. God created the universe in six 24 hour days. 20:11
Leviticus
# The bible says that hares and coneys are unclean because they “chew the cud” but do not part the hoof. But hares and coneys are not ruminants and they do not “chew the cud.” 11:5-6
# Bats are birds to the biblical God. 11:13, 19
# Four-legged fowls are abominations. 11:20
# Be sure to watch out for those “other flying creeping things which have four feet.” (I wish God wouldn’t get so technical!) I guess he must mean four-legged insects. You’d think that since God made the insects, and so many of them (at least several million species), that he would know how many legs they have! 11:23
# God’s law for lepers: Get two birds. Kill one. Dip the live bird in the blood of the dead one. Sprinkle the blood on the leper seven times, and then let the blood-soaked bird fly off. Next find a lamb and kill it. Wipe some of its blood on the patient’s right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle seven times with oil and wipe some of the oil on his right ear, thumb and big toe. Repeat. Finally kill a couple doves and offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. 14:2-52
Numbers
# The Israelite population went from seventy (Ex.1:5) to several million (over 600,000 adult males) in just a few generations! 1:45-46
# When the tabernacle was set up, it was covered by a cloud during the day and by fire all night. 9:15
# God led the Israelites from one camp to the other with a cloud. When the cloud stopped and rested someplace, the Israelites pitched their tents. When the cloud started moving again, the Israelites followed it. 9:16-23
# God sends quails to feed his people until they were “two cubits [about a meter] high upon the face of the earth.” Taking the “face of the earth” to be a circle with a radius of say 30 kilometers (an approximate day’s journey), this would amount to 3 trillion (3×1012) liters of quails. At 2 quails per liter, this would provide a couple million quails for each of several million people. 11:31
# God strikes Miriam with leprosy. (In the Bible, leprosy is caused by the wrath of God or the malice of Satan. 12:10
# “They … cut down … a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff.”
A single cluster of grapes was so heavy that it took two men to carry it. I guess that’s what you’d expect, though, since they were in the land of giants. (See verses 32-33.) 13:23
# “And there we saw the giants … And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” This statement may have been figurative, hyperbole, typical biblical exaggeration, or an actual description of the sons of Anak, in which case they must have been about 100 meters tall. These are the same giants (the Nephilium) that resulted when the “sons of God” mated with “the daughters of men in Gen.6:4. Of course these superhuman god-men should have been destroyed in the flood. So what are they doing still alive? 13:33
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than a few weeks. 14:33, 32:13
# God’s cure for snakebite: a brass serpent on a pole. 21:8
# God has “the strength of a unicorn.” Oh heck, I bet he’s even stronger than a unicorn. 23:22, 24:8
# “He made them wander in the wilderness forty years.”
It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than a few weeks. 32:13
Deuteronomy
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more a few weeks. 2:7, 8:2, 29:5
# “A land of giants: giants dwelt therein in old time.” (They must have been much more common back then.) 2:10-11, 20-21
# Og, the king of the giants, was a tall man, even by NBA standards. His bed measured 9 by 4 cubits (13.5 feet long and 6 feet wide). 3:11
# God promises to cast out seven nations including the Amorites, Canaanites, and the Jebusites. But he was unable to fulfill his promise. These nations were “greater and mightier” than the Israelites, who according to Ex.12:37 and Num.1:45-46 already had numbered several million. So the region, according to the bible, must have had a population of more than twenty million! 7:1
# This verse mistakenly says that the hare chews its cud. 14:7-8
# To the biblical God, a bat is just an another unclean bird. 14:11, 18
# “And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.” 28:23
# “The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.” 28:24
# “An eagle … beareth them on her wings.”
Do eagles carry their young on their wings? I know of no evidence (except for the single anecdote provided here) that they do. 32:11
# “Their wine is the poison of dragons.” I wonder what genus and species the bible is referring to when it mentions dragons. 32:33
# Joseph’s “horns are like the horns of a unicorn.” 33:17
Joshua
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than ten days. 5:6
# Joshua says that those who try to rebuild Jericho will be accursed by God, and will have to sacrifice both their oldest and their youngest sons in its construction. Well, Jericho still exists today, and is often considered to be the world’s oldest, continuously occupied city. 6:26
# In Joshua 8 the Israelites destroy Ai and make it a desolate heap. But Ai was an abandoned city by the time of the Israelites and this story is a myth invented to explain the ruins of an ancient city that the Israelites encountered. See Archaeology and Biblical Accuracy by Farrell Till. 8:1-29
# This verse says that Ai was never again occupied after it was destroyed by Joshua. But Nehemiah (7:32) lists it among the cities of Israel at the time of the Babylonian captivity. 8:28
# In a divine type of daylight savings time, God makes the sun stand still so that Joshua can get all his killing done before dark. 10:12-13
# “And the coast of Og king of Bashan, which as of the remnant of the giants….” 12:4, 18:6
Judges
# “The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” Unless astrology is true, how can the stars affect the outcome of a battle? 5:20
# “As the sun … goeth forth in his might.” The sun, according to the bible, goes around the earth. 5:31
Ruth (None)
1 Samuel
# “The pillars of the earth are the LORD’s, and he hath set the world upon them. 2:8
# “So Samuel called unto the LORD; and the LORD sent thunder and rain.” 12:18
# After Jonathan’s first slaughter (20 men in one half acre), God showed his approval with “a very great trembling.” 14:15
# Goliath was ten feet tall (”six cubits and a span”). 17:4
2 Samuel
# “He weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels.”
Absalom’s hair was heavy upon him 14:25-26
# In what is surely a biblical exaggeration, we are told that “the servants of David” killed 20,000 soldiers in one day. And that “the wood [forest] devoured more people that day than the sword devoured.” It must have been spooky forest to have devoured more than 20,000 soldiers. 18:7-8
# A giant with six fingers and six toes. 21:20
# “There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth.”
What happens when God gets mad? The earth shakes, the foundations of heaven move, smoke comes out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth.”22:8-9
# “The foundations of the world were discovered … at the blast of the breath of his nostrils.” 22:16
# How many soldiers did Israel have? This verse says that Judah and Israel had a total of 1,300,000 fighting men (1 Chr.21:5 says 1,570,000) in this battle. Of course, this is a ridiculously high number for a battle between two tribal armies in 1000 BCE. (The United States had about 1.37 million active duty soldiers in 2001.) 24:9
1 Kings
# This verse implies that the value of p is 3. (The actual value is approximately 3.14159.)
Good Math, Bad Math: Innumerate Fundamentalists and ?
7:23
# God creates droughts by causing “heaven to shut up” as a punishment for sin. 8:35
# Ever the playful spirit, God withers, and then restores, the hand of king Jeroboam. 13:4
# God passes by and causes a great wind, earthquake, fire, and a little voice. (God was in the little voice.) 19:11-12
2 Kings
# Lehi prayed and pillar of fire appeared out of nowhere on a rock. 1:6
# God sends two bears to rip up 42 little children for making fun of Elisha’s bald head. 2:23-24
# Elisha restores the life of a dead child, but only after laying on him a couple of times, putting his mouth on the child’s mouth, his eyes on the child’s eyes, and his hands on the child’s hands. Finally, the child responds by sneezing seven times.
Was this a miraculous healing or artificial respiration? 4:32-35
# Elisha cures a leper, but only after the leper dips himself seven times in the Jordan. 5:14
# Elisha not only can cure leprosy, he can also dish it out. Here he makes his servant (Gehazi) and all his descendants lepers forever. 5:27
# A dead body is brought to life when it accidentally touches the bones of Elisha. 13:21
# “So, king of Egypt”
There was no king of Egypt of the time named “So” or with any similar name. 17:4
# Take a lump of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered.” 20:7
# Isaiah, with a little help from God, makes the sun move backwards ten degrees. Now that’s quite a trick. All at once, the earth stopped spinning and then reversed its direction of rotation. Or maybe the sun traveled around the earth in those days! 20:11
1 Chronicles
# Some creationists believe that this verse (and Gen.10:25) refers to continental drift, which, they say, began to occur during the days of Pelag (which means “division”), about 100 or so years after the flood. 1:19
# “The earth … shall be stable, that it be not moved.” It doesn’t spin on its axis or travel about the sun. 16:30
# According to this verse David’s army had 1,100,000 men from Israel and 470,000 men from Judah, Of course, this numbers is ridiculously high for a battle between two tribal armies in 1000 BCE. (The United States had about 1.37 million active duty soldiers in 2001.) 21:5 David provides Solomon with a fantastically large amount of gold and silver with which to build the temple: 100,000 talents of gold and 1,000,000 talents of silver. Since a talent was about 60 pounds, this would be about 3,000 tons of gold and 30,000 tons of silver. 22:14
# King David collects ten thousand drams (or darics) for the construction of the temple in Jerusalem. This is especially interesting since darics were coins named after King Darius I who lived some five hundred years after David. 29:7
# As usual, the reported amounts of gold, silver, and iron are grossly exaggerated. (5000 talents of gold, for example, would be about 150,000 kilograms, which would be worth about 4.2 billion US dollars in today’s market.) 29:7
2 Chronicles
# Since the molten sea was round with a diameter of ten cubits and a circumference of thirty cubits, we know that the biblical value of p is 3. (The actual value is approximately 3.14159.) 4:2
# Abijah spoke to 1,200,000 soldiers at one time. (He had a really loud voice.) 13:3-4
# 500,000 soldiers die in a single God-assisted slaughter. 13:16-17
# In the largest single God-assisted massacre in the bible, Asa, with God’s help, kills one million Ethiopians. 14:8-14
# Asa, when he had a foot disease, went to physicians instead of seeking the Lord. (God disapproves of those who seek medical help rather than “seeking the Lord.”) 16:12
# God makes Uzziah a leper for burning incense without a license. 26:19-21
Ezra
# In the house of the rolls … in Babylon” This is the only library building mentioned in the Bible. The author mistakenly thought that Media was a part of Babylon. 6:1-2
Nehemiah (None)
Esther
# “Haman thought in his heart.” Most people think with their heads, but biblical folks think with their hearts. 6:6
Job
# The earth rests upon pillars and doesn’t move (unless God gets angry or something). 9:6
# “Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not.”
The earth is fixed and the sun travels about it. 9:7
# “The measure thereof is longer than the earth.”
(What is the length of a sphere?) 11:9
# Heaven is set upon pillars that tremble when God gets mad. 26:11
# “By the breath of God frost is given.” 37:10
# The earth is set on foundations and it does not move. 38:4-6
# “That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it.”
God could (if he wanted to) pick up the earth by its ends and shake all the wicked people off of it.
38:13
# God has snow and hail all stored up to use later “in time of trouble. 38:22
# God spread out the sky, which is a solid structure, hard and strong like a mirror. 37:18
# Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion?”
God seems pleased to have created prey for lions and ravens to eat. 38:39-41
# Ostriches are not cruel and stupid birds who abandon their eggs to die after laying them, as these verses imply. They are, in fact, careful and attentive parents. The male scoops out a hollow for the eggs, which are incubated by the female during the day and the male at night. After the eggs are hatched, they are cared for by the mother for over a month, at which time the chicks can keep up with running adults. 39:13-16
# The bible is wrong about ostriches being cruel and inattentive parents (39:13-16). But if they were, whose fault would it be? Why would God deprive them of the tools that are needed to do the job right? 39:17
# “The eagle … seeketh the prey…. Her young ones suck up blood.”
God is pleased with the way that predators kill and devour their prey. 39:27-30
# Bible believers have identified the behemoth as a hippopotamus, dinosaur, wildebeest, or crocodile. But my favorite is the way these verses are translated by Stephen Mitchell: “Look now: the Beast that I made: he eats grass like a bull. Look: the power in his thighs, the pulsing sinews of his belly. His penis stiffens like a pine; his testicles bulge with vigor.” 40:15-16
# “Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord?” 41:1-34
# “His [the leviathan's] teeth are terrible round about.”
God has equipped predators with teeth that tear the flesh of their prey. 41:14
Psalms
# “The righteous God trieth the hearts and reins.”
Jesus will search your kidneys 7:9
# “My reins also instruct me in the night seasons.”
Jesus will search your kidneys 16:7
# The earth shakes whenever God really gets mad. 18:7
# “The foundations of the world were discovered … at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.” (The earth is set on firm foundations and does not move — unless God blows his nose.) 18:15
# The sun moves around the earth. 19:4-6
Religion is ridiculous.
November 7th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Allycrap alert! Allycrap alert! Allycrap alert!
Ally, stop spewing your absurd bible crap about that asshole of a god that you worship. The absurdity of your religion is plain to see, and as usual, Skeptics does a fine job of showing just how far wrong the xtian bible is, and how the absurd (and fortunately fictional) god that the bible describes would simply be a vengeful, cruel ASSHOLE rather than a reliever of suffering, if such a being actually existed. See here
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/nt_list.html
and here are a few examples to shield us from the stench of ally’s crap:
Genesis
# “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
God purposefully designed a system that ensures the suffering and death of all his creatures, parasite and host, predator and prey.
# The Genesis 1 creation account conflicts with the order of events that are known to science. In Genesis, the earth is created before light and stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants before any animals. The order of events known from science is just the opposite. 1:1-2:3
# God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day. Yet he didn’t make the light producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day (1:14-19). And how could there be “the evening and the morning” on the first day if there was no sun to mark them? 1:3-5
# God spends one-sixth of his entire creative effort (the second day) working on a solid firmament. This strange structure, which God calls heaven, is intended to separate the higher waters from the lower waters. 1:6-8
# Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes (1:14-19). 1:11
# God lets “the earth bring forth” the plants, rather than creating them directly. Maybe Genesis is not so anti-evolution after all. 1:11
# In an apparent endorsement of astrology, God places the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament so that they can be used “for signs”. This, of course, is exactly what astrologers do: read “the signs” in the Zodiac in an effort to predict what will happen on Earth. 1:14
# God makes two lights: “the greater light [the sun] to rule the day, and the lesser light [the moon] to rule the night.” But the moon is not a light, but only reflects light from the sun. And why, if God made the moon to “rule the night”, does it spend half of its time moving through the daytime sky? 1:16
# “He made the stars also.” God spends a day making light (before making the stars) and separating light from darkness; then, at the end of a hard day’s work, and almost as an afterthought, he makes the trillions of stars. 1:16
# “And God set them [the stars] in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.” 1:17
# In verse 11, God “let the earth bring forth” the plants. Now he has the earth “bring forth” the animals as well. So maybe the creationists have it all wrong. Maybe God created livings things through the process of evolution. 1:24
# God gave humans dominion over every other living thing on earth. 1:26
# God commands us to “be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over … every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” 1:28
# “I have given you every herb … and every tree … for meat.”
Since many plants have evolved poisons to protect against animals that would like to eat them, God’s advice is more than a little reckless. Would you tell your children to go out in the garden and eat whatever plants they encounter? Of course not. But then, you are much nicer and smarter than God. 1:29
# All animals were originally herbivores. Tapeworms, vampire bats, mosquitoes, and barracudas — all were strict vegetarians, as they were created by God. 1:30
# “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” He purposefully designed a system that ensures the suffering and death of all his creatures, parasite and host, predator and prey. 1:31
# In Genesis 1 the entire creation takes 6 days, but the universe is at least 12 billion years old, with new stars constantly being formed. 1:31
# Humans were not created instantaneously from dust and breath, but evolved over millions of years from simpler life forms. 2:7
# After making the animals, God has Adam name them all. The naming of several million species must have kept Adam busy for a while. 2:18-22
# God fashions a woman out of one of Adam’s ribs.
Because of this story, it was commonly believed (and sometimes it is still said today) that males have one less rib than females. When Vesalius showed in 1543 that the number of ribs was the same in males and females, it created a storm of controversy. 2:19
# God curses the serpent. From now on the serpent will crawl on his belly and eat dust. One wonders how he got around before — by hopping on his tail, perhaps? But snakes don’t eat dust, do they? 3:14
# Because Adam listened to Eve, God cursed the ground and causes thorns and thistles to grow. Before this, according to the (false) Genesis story, plants had no natural defenses. The rose had no thorn, cacti were spineless, holly leaves were smooth, and the nettle had no sting. Foxgloves, oleander, and milkweeds were all perfectly safe to eat. 3:17-18
# When Lamech was born, nine generations were alive at once. Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, and Lamech were all alive at the time of Lamech’s birth. Adam lived to see his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson. 5:25
# “There were giants in the earth in those days.” 6:4
# Noah is told to make an ark that is 450 feet long. 6:14-15
# Whether by twos or by sevens, Noah takes male and female representatives from each species of “every thing that creepeth upon the earth.” 7:8
# God opens the “windows of heaven.” He does this every time it rains. 7:11
# All of the animals boarded the ark “in the selfsame day.” 7:13-14
# The flood covered the highest mountain tops (Mount Everest?) with fifteen cubits to spare. 7:20
# “The windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained.” This happens whenever it stops raining. 8:2
# Noah sends a dove out to see if there was any dry land. But the dove returns without finding any. Then, just seven days later, the dove goes out again and returns with an olive leaf. But how could an olive tree survive the flood? And if any seeds happened to survive, they certainly wouldn’t germinate and grow leaves within a seven day period. 8:8-11
# When the animals left the ark, what would they have eaten? There would have been no plants after the ground had been submerged for nearly a year. What would the carnivores have eaten? Whatever prey they ate would have gone extinct. And how did the New World primates or the Australian marsupials find their way back after the flood subsided? 8:19
# “And the Lord smelled a sweet savor.”
Noah kills the “clean beasts” and burns their dead bodies for God. According to 7:8 this would have caused the extinction of all “clean” animals since only two of each were taken onto the ark. 8:20-21
# “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” Although this would have been good advice for the mythical Noah, it is deadly advice for humankind as a whole. Overpopulation is one of our greatest problems, yet there is nothing in the bible to address it. 9:1
# According to this verse, all animals fear humans. Although it is true that many do, it is also true that some do not. Sharks and grizzly bears, for example, are generally much less afraid of us than we are of them. 9:2
# “Into your hand are they (the animals) delivered.”
God gave the animals to humans, and they can do whatever they please with them. This verse has been used by bible believers to justify all kinds of cruelty to animals and environmental destruction. 9:2
# God is rightly filled with remorse for having killed his creatures. He even puts the rainbow in the sky to remind himself of his promise to the animals not to do it again. But rainbows are caused by the nature of light, the refractive index of water, and the shape of raindrops. There were rainbows billions of years before humans existed. 9:13
# Some creationists believe that this verse refers to continental drift, which, they say, began to occur during the days of Pelag (which means “division”), about 100 or so years after the flood. But many other creationists disagree. 10:25
# “The whole earth was of one language.” But this could not be true, since by this time (around 2400 BCE) there were already many languages, each unintelligible to the others. 11:1, 6
# “Now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
God worries that people could build a tower high enough to reach him (them?) in heaven, and that by so doing they will become omnipotent. 11:4-6
# According to the Tower of Babel story, the many human languages were created instantaneously by God. But actually the various languages evolved gradually over long periods of time. 11:9
# The ridiculously long lives of the patriarchs. 11:10-32
# “Abram … pursued them unto Dan.”
This is an obvious anachronism, since the city of Dan was not named “Dan” until the time of the Judges (see Judges 18:29). In fact, Dan (for whom the city was named) was not even born yet (see Genesis 30:6). 14:14
# “And they returned to the land of the Philistines.” But the Philistines didn’t arrive in the region of Canaan until around 1200 BCE — 800 years after Abraham’s supposed migration from Ur. 21:32, 26:1, 8, 15, 18
# Laban learns “by experience” that God has blessed him for Jacob’s sake. “By experience” means “by divination”, at least that is how most other versions translate this verse. 30:27
# Jacob displays his (and God’s) knowledge of biology by having goats copulate while looking at streaked rods. The result is streaked baby goats. 30:37-39
# God (or an angel) praises Jacob for his fancy genetic work in Gen.30:37-39. 31:11-12
# Joseph and his magic divining cup. 44:5, 44:15
Exodus
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than ten days. 16:35
# The Israelite population went from 70 (or 75) to several million in a few hundred years. 1:5,7, 12:37, 38:26
# Why are some people born with disabilities? Because God deliberately makes them that way. 4:11
# God killed Egyptians and their livestock by smashing them with huge hailstones mixed with fire. 9:24
# God led the Israelites through the land of the Philistines, hundreds of years before the Philistines were established in Canaan. 13:17
# If you do what God says, he won’t send his diseases on you (like he did to the Egyptians). But otherwise…. 15:26
# “The manna referred to in the Bible, in Exodus 16:14, seems to have been the dried excrement of Trabutina mannipara, a scale insect that feeds on tamarisk trees.” Benjamin B. Normark, The Sex Lives of Scales, Natural History, Sept. 2004. 16:14-15
# A magical trumpet played loud while God came down in smoke, fire, and earthquakes onto Mt. Sinai. 19:16-18
# “In six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them.”
Believers often say that the “days” of creation should be taken allegorically, but this verse is quite clear. God created the universe in six 24 hour days. 20:11
Leviticus
# The bible says that hares and coneys are unclean because they “chew the cud” but do not part the hoof. But hares and coneys are not ruminants and they do not “chew the cud.” 11:5-6
# Bats are birds to the biblical God. 11:13, 19
# Four-legged fowls are abominations. 11:20
# Be sure to watch out for those “other flying creeping things which have four feet.” (I wish God wouldn’t get so technical!) I guess he must mean four-legged insects. You’d think that since God made the insects, and so many of them (at least several million species), that he would know how many legs they have! 11:23
# God’s law for lepers: Get two birds. Kill one. Dip the live bird in the blood of the dead one. Sprinkle the blood on the leper seven times, and then let the blood-soaked bird fly off. Next find a lamb and kill it. Wipe some of its blood on the patient’s right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle seven times with oil and wipe some of the oil on his right ear, thumb and big toe. Repeat. Finally kill a couple doves and offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. 14:2-52
Numbers
# The Israelite population went from seventy (Ex.1:5) to several million (over 600,000 adult males) in just a few generations! 1:45-46
# When the tabernacle was set up, it was covered by a cloud during the day and by fire all night. 9:15
# God led the Israelites from one camp to the other with a cloud. When the cloud stopped and rested someplace, the Israelites pitched their tents. When the cloud started moving again, the Israelites followed it. 9:16-23
# God sends quails to feed his people until they were “two cubits [about a meter] high upon the face of the earth.” Taking the “face of the earth” to be a circle with a radius of say 30 kilometers (an approximate day’s journey), this would amount to 3 trillion (3×1012) liters of quails. At 2 quails per liter, this would provide a couple million quails for each of several million people. 11:31
# God strikes Miriam with leprosy. (In the Bible, leprosy is caused by the wrath of God or the malice of Satan. 12:10
# “They … cut down … a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff.”
A single cluster of grapes was so heavy that it took two men to carry it. I guess that’s what you’d expect, though, since they were in the land of giants. (See verses 32-33.) 13:23
# “And there we saw the giants … And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” This statement may have been figurative, hyperbole, typical biblical exaggeration, or an actual description of the sons of Anak, in which case they must have been about 100 meters tall. These are the same giants (the Nephilium) that resulted when the “sons of God” mated with “the daughters of men in Gen.6:4. Of course these superhuman god-men should have been destroyed in the flood. So what are they doing still alive? 13:33
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than a few weeks. 14:33, 32:13
# God’s cure for snakebite: a brass serpent on a pole. 21:8
# God has “the strength of a unicorn.” Oh heck, I bet he’s even stronger than a unicorn. 23:22, 24:8
# “He made them wander in the wilderness forty years.”
It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than a few weeks. 32:13
Deuteronomy
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more a few weeks. 2:7, 8:2, 29:5
# “A land of giants: giants dwelt therein in old time.” (They must have been much more common back then.) 2:10-11, 20-21
# Og, the king of the giants, was a tall man, even by NBA standards. His bed measured 9 by 4 cubits (13.5 feet long and 6 feet wide). 3:11
# God promises to cast out seven nations including the Amorites, Canaanites, and the Jebusites. But he was unable to fulfill his promise. These nations were “greater and mightier” than the Israelites, who according to Ex.12:37 and Num.1:45-46 already had numbered several million. So the region, according to the bible, must have had a population of more than twenty million! 7:1
# This verse mistakenly says that the hare chews its cud. 14:7-8
# To the biblical God, a bat is just an another unclean bird. 14:11, 18
# “And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.” 28:23
# “The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.” 28:24
# “An eagle … beareth them on her wings.”
Do eagles carry their young on their wings? I know of no evidence (except for the single anecdote provided here) that they do. 32:11
# “Their wine is the poison of dragons.” I wonder what genus and species the bible is referring to when it mentions dragons. 32:33
# Joseph’s “horns are like the horns of a unicorn.” 33:17
Joshua
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than ten days. 5:6
# Joshua says that those who try to rebuild Jericho will be accursed by God, and will have to sacrifice both their oldest and their youngest sons in its construction. Well, Jericho still exists today, and is often considered to be the world’s oldest, continuously occupied city. 6:26
# In Joshua 8 the Israelites destroy Ai and make it a desolate heap. But Ai was an abandoned city by the time of the Israelites and this story is a myth invented to explain the ruins of an ancient city that the Israelites encountered. See Archaeology and Biblical Accuracy by Farrell Till. 8:1-29
# This verse says that Ai was never again occupied after it was destroyed by Joshua. But Nehemiah (7:32) lists it among the cities of Israel at the time of the Babylonian captivity. 8:28
# In a divine type of daylight savings time, God makes the sun stand still so that Joshua can get all his killing done before dark. 10:12-13
# “And the coast of Og king of Bashan, which as of the remnant of the giants….” 12:4, 18:6
Judges
# “The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” Unless astrology is true, how can the stars affect the outcome of a battle? 5:20
# “As the sun … goeth forth in his might.” The sun, according to the bible, goes around the earth. 5:31
Ruth (None)
1 Samuel
# “The pillars of the earth are the LORD’s, and he hath set the world upon them. 2:8
# “So Samuel called unto the LORD; and the LORD sent thunder and rain.” 12:18
# After Jonathan’s first slaughter (20 men in one half acre), God showed his approval with “a very great trembling.” 14:15
# Goliath was ten feet tall (”six cubits and a span”). 17:4
2 Samuel
# “He weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels.”
Absalom’s hair was heavy upon him 14:25-26
# In what is surely a biblical exaggeration, we are told that “the servants of David” killed 20,000 soldiers in one day. And that “the wood [forest] devoured more people that day than the sword devoured.” It must have been spooky forest to have devoured more than 20,000 soldiers. 18:7-8
# A giant with six fingers and six toes. 21:20
# “There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth.”
What happens when God gets mad? The earth shakes, the foundations of heaven move, smoke comes out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth.”22:8-9
# “The foundations of the world were discovered … at the blast of the breath of his nostrils.” 22:16
# How many soldiers did Israel have? This verse says that Judah and Israel had a total of 1,300,000 fighting men (1 Chr.21:5 says 1,570,000) in this battle. Of course, this is a ridiculously high number for a battle between two tribal armies in 1000 BCE. (The United States had about 1.37 million active duty soldiers in 2001.) 24:9
1 Kings
# This verse implies that the value of p is 3. (The actual value is approximately 3.14159.)
Good Math, Bad Math: Innumerate Fundamentalists and ?
7:23
# God creates droughts by causing “heaven to shut up” as a punishment for sin. 8:35
# Ever the playful spirit, God withers, and then restores, the hand of king Jeroboam. 13:4
# God passes by and causes a great wind, earthquake, fire, and a little voice. (God was in the little voice.) 19:11-12
2 Kings
# Lehi prayed and pillar of fire appeared out of nowhere on a rock. 1:6
# God sends two bears to rip up 42 little children for making fun of Elisha’s bald head. 2:23-24
# Elisha restores the life of a dead child, but only after laying on him a couple of times, putting his mouth on the child’s mouth, his eyes on the child’s eyes, and his hands on the child’s hands. Finally, the child responds by sneezing seven times.
Was this a miraculous healing or artificial respiration? 4:32-35
# Elisha cures a leper, but only after the leper dips himself seven times in the Jordan. 5:14
# Elisha not only can cure leprosy, he can also dish it out. Here he makes his servant (Gehazi) and all his descendants lepers forever. 5:27
# A dead body is brought to life when it accidentally touches the bones of Elisha. 13:21
# “So, king of Egypt”
There was no king of Egypt of the time named “So” or with any similar name. 17:4
# Take a lump of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered.” 20:7
# Isaiah, with a little help from God, makes the sun move backwards ten degrees. Now that’s quite a trick. All at once, the earth stopped spinning and then reversed its direction of rotation. Or maybe the sun traveled around the earth in those days! 20:11
1 Chronicles
# Some creationists believe that this verse (and Gen.10:25) refers to continental drift, which, they say, began to occur during the days of Pelag (which means “division”), about 100 or so years after the flood. 1:19
# “The earth … shall be stable, that it be not moved.” It doesn’t spin on its axis or travel about the sun. 16:30
# According to this verse David’s army had 1,100,000 men from Israel and 470,000 men from Judah, Of course, this numbers is ridiculously high for a battle between two tribal armies in 1000 BCE. (The United States had about 1.37 million active duty soldiers in 2001.) 21:5 David provides Solomon with a fantastically large amount of gold and silver with which to build the temple: 100,000 talents of gold and 1,000,000 talents of silver. Since a talent was about 60 pounds, this would be about 3,000 tons of gold and 30,000 tons of silver. 22:14
# King David collects ten thousand drams (or darics) for the construction of the temple in Jerusalem. This is especially interesting since darics were coins named after King Darius I who lived some five hundred years after David. 29:7
# As usual, the reported amounts of gold, silver, and iron are grossly exaggerated. (5000 talents of gold, for example, would be about 150,000 kilograms, which would be worth about 4.2 billion US dollars in today’s market.) 29:7
2 Chronicles
# Since the molten sea was round with a diameter of ten cubits and a circumference of thirty cubits, we know that the biblical value of p is 3. (The actual value is approximately 3.14159.) 4:2
# Abijah spoke to 1,200,000 soldiers at one time. (He had a really loud voice.) 13:3-4
# 500,000 soldiers die in a single God-assisted slaughter. 13:16-17
# In the largest single God-assisted massacre in the bible, Asa, with God’s help, kills one million Ethiopians. 14:8-14
# Asa, when he had a foot disease, went to physicians instead of seeking the Lord. (God disapproves of those who seek medical help rather than “seeking the Lord.”) 16:12
# God makes Uzziah a leper for burning incense without a license. 26:19-21
Ezra
# In the house of the rolls … in Babylon” This is the only library building mentioned in the Bible. The author mistakenly thought that Media was a part of Babylon. 6:1-2
Nehemiah (None)
Esther
# “Haman thought in his heart.” Most people think with their heads, but biblical folks think with their hearts. 6:6
Job
# The earth rests upon pillars and doesn’t move (unless God gets angry or something). 9:6
# “Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not.”
The earth is fixed and the sun travels about it. 9:7
# “The measure thereof is longer than the earth.”
(What is the length of a sphere?) 11:9
# Heaven is set upon pillars that tremble when God gets mad. 26:11
# “By the breath of God frost is given.” 37:10
# The earth is set on foundations and it does not move. 38:4-6
# “That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it.”
God could (if he wanted to) pick up the earth by its ends and shake all the wicked people off of it.
38:13
# God has snow and hail all stored up to use later “in time of trouble. 38:22
# God spread out the sky, which is a solid structure, hard and strong like a mirror. 37:18
# Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion?”
God seems pleased to have created prey for lions and ravens to eat. 38:39-41
# Ostriches are not cruel and stupid birds who abandon their eggs to die after laying them, as these verses imply. They are, in fact, careful and attentive parents. The male scoops out a hollow for the eggs, which are incubated by the female during the day and the male at night. After the eggs are hatched, they are cared for by the mother for over a month, at which time the chicks can keep up with running adults. 39:13-16
# The bible is wrong about ostriches being cruel and inattentive parents (39:13-16). But if they were, whose fault would it be? Why would God deprive them of the tools that are needed to do the job right? 39:17
# “The eagle … seeketh the prey…. Her young ones suck up blood.”
God is pleased with the way that predators kill and devour their prey. 39:27-30
# Bible believers have identified the behemoth as a hippopotamus, dinosaur, wildebeest, or crocodile. But my favorite is the way these verses are translated by Stephen Mitchell: “Look now: the Beast that I made: he eats grass like a bull. Look: the power in his thighs, the pulsing sinews of his belly. His penis stiffens like a pine; his testicles bulge with vigor.” 40:15-16
# “Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord?” 41:1-34
# “His [the leviathan's] teeth are terrible round about.”
God has equipped predators with teeth that tear the flesh of their prey. 41:14
Psalms
# “The righteous God trieth the hearts and reins.”
Jesus will search your kidneys 7:9
# “My reins also instruct me in the night seasons.”
Jesus will search your kidneys 16:7
# The earth shakes whenever God really gets mad. 18:7
# “The foundations of the world were discovered … at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.” (The earth is set on firm foundations and does not move — unless God blows his nose.) 18:15
# The sun moves around the earth. 19:4-6
Religion is for the ignorant, the gullible, the weak, and the stupid, and for those who would profit from them.
November 7th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Allycrap alert! Allycrap alert! Allycrap alert!
Ally, stop spewing your absurd bible crap about that asshole of a god that you worship. The absurdity of your religion is plain to see, and as usual, Skeptics does a fine job of showing just how far wrong the xtian bible is, and how the absurd (and fortunately fictional) god that the bible describes would simply be a vengeful, cruel ASSHOLE rather than a reliever of suffering, if such a being actually existed. See here
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/nt_list.html
and here are a few examples to shield us from the stench of ally’s crap:
Genesis
# “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
God purposefully designed a system that ensures the suffering and death of all his creatures, parasite and host, predator and prey.
# The Genesis 1 creation account conflicts with the order of events that are known to science. In Genesis, the earth is created before light and stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants before any animals. The order of events known from science is just the opposite. 1:1-2:3
# God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day. Yet he didn’t make the light producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day (1:14-19). And how could there be “the evening and the morning” on the first day if there was no sun to mark them? 1:3-5
# God spends one-sixth of his entire creative effort (the second day) working on a solid firmament. This strange structure, which God calls heaven, is intended to separate the higher waters from the lower waters. 1:6-8
# Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes (1:14-19). 1:11
# God lets “the earth bring forth” the plants, rather than creating them directly. Maybe Genesis is not so anti-evolution after all. 1:11
# In an apparent endorsement of astrology, God places the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament so that they can be used “for signs”. This, of course, is exactly what astrologers do: read “the signs” in the Zodiac in an effort to predict what will happen on Earth. 1:14
# God makes two lights: “the greater light [the sun] to rule the day, and the lesser light [the moon] to rule the night.” But the moon is not a light, but only reflects light from the sun. And why, if God made the moon to “rule the night”, does it spend half of its time moving through the daytime sky? 1:16
# “He made the stars also.” God spends a day making light (before making the stars) and separating light from darkness; then, at the end of a hard day’s work, and almost as an afterthought, he makes the trillions of stars. 1:16
# “And God set them [the stars] in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.” 1:17
# In verse 11, God “let the earth bring forth” the plants. Now he has the earth “bring forth” the animals as well. So maybe the creationists have it all wrong. Maybe God created livings things through the process of evolution. 1:24
# God gave humans dominion over every other living thing on earth. 1:26
# God commands us to “be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over … every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” 1:28
# “I have given you every herb … and every tree … for meat.”
Since many plants have evolved poisons to protect against animals that would like to eat them, God’s advice is more than a little reckless. Would you tell your children to go out in the garden and eat whatever plants they encounter? Of course not. But then, you are much nicer and smarter than God. 1:29
# All animals were originally herbivores. Tapeworms, vampire bats, mosquitoes, and barracudas — all were strict vegetarians, as they were created by God. 1:30
# “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” He purposefully designed a system that ensures the suffering and death of all his creatures, parasite and host, predator and prey. 1:31
# In Genesis 1 the entire creation takes 6 days, but the universe is at least 12 billion years old, with new stars constantly being formed. 1:31
# Humans were not created instantaneously from dust and breath, but evolved over millions of years from simpler life forms. 2:7
# After making the animals, God has Adam name them all. The naming of several million species must have kept Adam busy for a while. 2:18-22
# God fashions a woman out of one of Adam’s ribs.
Because of this story, it was commonly believed (and sometimes it is still said today) that males have one less rib than females. When Vesalius showed in 1543 that the number of ribs was the same in males and females, it created a storm of controversy. 2:19
# God curses the serpent. From now on the serpent will crawl on his belly and eat dust. One wonders how he got around before — by hopping on his tail, perhaps? But snakes don’t eat dust, do they? 3:14
# Because Adam listened to Eve, God cursed the ground and causes thorns and thistles to grow. Before this, according to the (false) Genesis story, plants had no natural defenses. The rose had no thorn, cacti were spineless, holly leaves were smooth, and the nettle had no sting. Foxgloves, oleander, and milkweeds were all perfectly safe to eat. 3:17-18
# When Lamech was born, nine generations were alive at once. Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, and Lamech were all alive at the time of Lamech’s birth. Adam lived to see his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson. 5:25
# “There were giants in the earth in those days.” 6:4
# Noah is told to make an ark that is 450 feet long. 6:14-15
# Whether by twos or by sevens, Noah takes male and female representatives from each species of “every thing that creepeth upon the earth.” 7:8
# God opens the “windows of heaven.” He does this every time it rains. 7:11
# All of the animals boarded the ark “in the selfsame day.” 7:13-14
# The flood covered the highest mountain tops (Mount Everest?) with fifteen cubits to spare. 7:20
# “The windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained.” This happens whenever it stops raining. 8:2
# Noah sends a dove out to see if there was any dry land. But the dove returns without finding any. Then, just seven days later, the dove goes out again and returns with an olive leaf. But how could an olive tree survive the flood? And if any seeds happened to survive, they certainly wouldn’t germinate and grow leaves within a seven day period. 8:8-11
# When the animals left the ark, what would they have eaten? There would have been no plants after the ground had been submerged for nearly a year. What would the carnivores have eaten? Whatever prey they ate would have gone extinct. And how did the New World primates or the Australian marsupials find their way back after the flood subsided? 8:19
# “And the Lord smelled a sweet savor.”
Noah kills the “clean beasts” and burns their dead bodies for God. According to 7:8 this would have caused the extinction of all “clean” animals since only two of each were taken onto the ark. 8:20-21
# “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” Although this would have been good advice for the mythical Noah, it is deadly advice for humankind as a whole. Overpopulation is one of our greatest problems, yet there is nothing in the bible to address it. 9:1
# According to this verse, all animals fear humans. Although it is true that many do, it is also true that some do not. Sharks and grizzly bears, for example, are generally much less afraid of us than we are of them. 9:2
# “Into your hand are they (the animals) delivered.”
God gave the animals to humans, and they can do whatever they please with them. This verse has been used by bible believers to justify all kinds of cruelty to animals and environmental destruction. 9:2
# God is rightly filled with remorse for having killed his creatures. He even puts the rainbow in the sky to remind himself of his promise to the animals not to do it again. But rainbows are caused by the nature of light, the refractive index of water, and the shape of raindrops. There were rainbows billions of years before humans existed. 9:13
# Some creationists believe that this verse refers to continental drift, which, they say, began to occur during the days of Pelag (which means “division”), about 100 or so years after the flood. But many other creationists disagree. 10:25
# “The whole earth was of one language.” But this could not be true, since by this time (around 2400 BCE) there were already many languages, each unintelligible to the others. 11:1, 6
# “Now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
God worries that people could build a tower high enough to reach him (them?) in heaven, and that by so doing they will become omnipotent. 11:4-6
# According to the Tower of Babel story, the many human languages were created instantaneously by God. But actually the various languages evolved gradually over long periods of time. 11:9
# The ridiculously long lives of the patriarchs. 11:10-32
# “Abram … pursued them unto Dan.”
This is an obvious anachronism, since the city of Dan was not named “Dan” until the time of the Judges (see Judges 18:29). In fact, Dan (for whom the city was named) was not even born yet (see Genesis 30:6). 14:14
# “And they returned to the land of the Philistines.” But the Philistines didn’t arrive in the region of Canaan until around 1200 BCE — 800 years after Abraham’s supposed migration from Ur. 21:32, 26:1, 8, 15, 18
# Laban learns “by experience” that God has blessed him for Jacob’s sake. “By experience” means “by divination”, at least that is how most other versions translate this verse. 30:27
# Jacob displays his (and God’s) knowledge of biology by having goats copulate while looking at streaked rods. The result is streaked baby goats. 30:37-39
# God (or an angel) praises Jacob for his fancy genetic work in Gen.30:37-39. 31:11-12
# Joseph and his magic divining cup. 44:5, 44:15
Exodus
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than ten days. 16:35
# The Israelite population went from 70 (or 75) to several million in a few hundred years. 1:5,7, 12:37, 38:26
# Why are some people born with disabilities? Because God deliberately makes them that way. 4:11
# God killed Egyptians and their livestock by smashing them with huge hailstones mixed with fire. 9:24
# God led the Israelites through the land of the Philistines, hundreds of years before the Philistines were established in Canaan. 13:17
# If you do what God says, he won’t send his diseases on you (like he did to the Egyptians). But otherwise…. 15:26
# “The manna referred to in the Bible, in Exodus 16:14, seems to have been the dried excrement of Trabutina mannipara, a scale insect that feeds on tamarisk trees.” Benjamin B. Normark, The Sex Lives of Scales, Natural History, Sept. 2004. 16:14-15
# A magical trumpet played loud while God came down in smoke, fire, and earthquakes onto Mt. Sinai. 19:16-18
# “In six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them.”
Believers often say that the “days” of creation should be taken allegorically, but this verse is quite clear. God created the universe in six 24 hour days. 20:11
Leviticus
# The bible says that hares and coneys are unclean because they “chew the cud” but do not part the hoof. But hares and coneys are not ruminants and they do not “chew the cud.” 11:5-6
# Bats are birds to the biblical God. 11:13, 19
# Four-legged fowls are abominations. 11:20
# Be sure to watch out for those “other flying creeping things which have four feet.” (I wish God wouldn’t get so technical!) I guess he must mean four-legged insects. You’d think that since God made the insects, and so many of them (at least several million species), that he would know how many legs they have! 11:23
# God’s law for lepers: Get two birds. Kill one. Dip the live bird in the blood of the dead one. Sprinkle the blood on the leper seven times, and then let the blood-soaked bird fly off. Next find a lamb and kill it. Wipe some of its blood on the patient’s right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle seven times with oil and wipe some of the oil on his right ear, thumb and big toe. Repeat. Finally kill a couple doves and offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. 14:2-52
Numbers
# The Israelite population went from seventy (Ex.1:5) to several million (over 600,000 adult males) in just a few generations! 1:45-46
# When the tabernacle was set up, it was covered by a cloud during the day and by fire all night. 9:15
# God led the Israelites from one camp to the other with a cloud. When the cloud stopped and rested someplace, the Israelites pitched their tents. When the cloud started moving again, the Israelites followed it. 9:16-23
# God sends quails to feed his people until they were “two cubits [about a meter] high upon the face of the earth.” Taking the “face of the earth” to be a circle with a radius of say 30 kilometers (an approximate day’s journey), this would amount to 3 trillion (3×1012) liters of quails. At 2 quails per liter, this would provide a couple million quails for each of several million people. 11:31
# God strikes Miriam with leprosy. (In the Bible, leprosy is caused by the wrath of God or the malice of Satan. 12:10
# “They … cut down … a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff.”
A single cluster of grapes was so heavy that it took two men to carry it. I guess that’s what you’d expect, though, since they were in the land of giants. (See verses 32-33.) 13:23
# “And there we saw the giants … And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” This statement may have been figurative, hyperbole, typical biblical exaggeration, or an actual description of the sons of Anak, in which case they must have been about 100 meters tall. These are the same giants (the Nephilium) that resulted when the “sons of God” mated with “the daughters of men in Gen.6:4. Of course these superhuman god-men should have been destroyed in the flood. So what are they doing still alive? 13:33
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than a few weeks. 14:33, 32:13
# God’s cure for snakebite: a brass serpent on a pole. 21:8
# God has “the strength of a unicorn.” Oh heck, I bet he’s even stronger than a unicorn. 23:22, 24:8
# “He made them wander in the wilderness forty years.”
It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than a few weeks. 32:13
Deuteronomy
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more a few weeks. 2:7, 8:2, 29:5
# “A land of giants: giants dwelt therein in old time.” (They must have been much more common back then.) 2:10-11, 20-21
# Og, the king of the giants, was a tall man, even by NBA standards. His bed measured 9 by 4 cubits (13.5 feet long and 6 feet wide). 3:11
# God promises to cast out seven nations including the Amorites, Canaanites, and the Jebusites. But he was unable to fulfill his promise. These nations were “greater and mightier” than the Israelites, who according to Ex.12:37 and Num.1:45-46 already had numbered several million. So the region, according to the bible, must have had a population of more than twenty million! 7:1
# This verse mistakenly says that the hare chews its cud. 14:7-8
# To the biblical God, a bat is just an another unclean bird. 14:11, 18
# “And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.” 28:23
# “The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.” 28:24
# “An eagle … beareth them on her wings.”
Do eagles carry their young on their wings? I know of no evidence (except for the single anecdote provided here) that they do. 32:11
# “Their wine is the poison of dragons.” I wonder what genus and species the bible is referring to when it mentions dragons. 32:33
# Joseph’s “horns are like the horns of a unicorn.” 33:17
Joshua
# It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to Canaan, yet such a journey, even at that time, would have taken no more than ten days. 5:6
# Joshua says that those who try to rebuild Jericho will be accursed by God, and will have to sacrifice both their oldest and their youngest sons in its construction. Well, Jericho still exists today, and is often considered to be the world’s oldest, continuously occupied city. 6:26
# In Joshua 8 the Israelites destroy Ai and make it a desolate heap. But Ai was an abandoned city by the time of the Israelites and this story is a myth invented to explain the ruins of an ancient city that the Israelites encountered. See Archaeology and Biblical Accuracy by Farrell Till. 8:1-29
# This verse says that Ai was never again occupied after it was destroyed by Joshua. But Nehemiah (7:32) lists it among the cities of Israel at the time of the Babylonian captivity. 8:28
# In a divine type of daylight savings time, God makes the sun stand still so that Joshua can get all his killing done before dark. 10:12-13
# “And the coast of Og king of Bashan, which as of the remnant of the giants….” 12:4, 18:6
Judges
# “The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” Unless astrology is true, how can the stars affect the outcome of a battle? 5:20
# “As the sun … goeth forth in his might.” The sun, according to the bible, goes around the earth. 5:31
Ruth (None)
1 Samuel
# “The pillars of the earth are the LORD’s, and he hath set the world upon them. 2:8
# “So Samuel called unto the LORD; and the LORD sent thunder and rain.” 12:18
# After Jonathan’s first slaughter (20 men in one half acre), God showed his approval with “a very great trembling.” 14:15
# Goliath was ten feet tall (”six cubits and a span”). 17:4
2 Samuel
# “He weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels.”
Absalom’s hair was heavy upon him 14:25-26
# In what is surely a biblical exaggeration, we are told that “the servants of David” killed 20,000 soldiers in one day. And that “the wood [forest] devoured more people that day than the sword devoured.” It must have been spooky forest to have devoured more than 20,000 soldiers. 18:7-8
# A giant with six fingers and six toes. 21:20
# “There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth.”
What happens when God gets mad? The earth shakes, the foundations of heaven move, smoke comes out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth.”22:8-9
# “The foundations of the world were discovered … at the blast of the breath of his nostrils.” 22:16
# How many soldiers did Israel have? This verse says that Judah and Israel had a total of 1,300,000 fighting men (1 Chr.21:5 says 1,570,000) in this battle. Of course, this is a ridiculously high number for a battle between two tribal armies in 1000 BCE. (The United States had about 1.37 million active duty soldiers in 2001.) 24:9
1 Kings
# This verse implies that the value of p is 3. (The actual value is approximately 3.14159.)
Good Math, Bad Math: Innumerate Fundamentalists and ?
7:23
# God creates droughts by causing “heaven to shut up” as a punishment for sin. 8:35
# Ever the playful spirit, God withers, and then restores, the hand of king Jeroboam. 13:4
# God passes by and causes a great wind, earthquake, fire, and a little voice. (God was in the little voice.) 19:11-12
2 Kings
# Lehi prayed and pillar of fire appeared out of nowhere on a rock. 1:6
# God sends two bears to rip up 42 little children for making fun of Elisha’s bald head. 2:23-24
# Elisha restores the life of a dead child, but only after laying on him a couple of times, putting his mouth on the child’s mouth, his eyes on the child’s eyes, and his hands on the child’s hands. Finally, the child responds by sneezing seven times.
Was this a miraculous healing or artificial respiration? 4:32-35
# Elisha cures a leper, but only after the leper dips himself seven times in the Jordan. 5:14
# Elisha not only can cure leprosy, he can also dish it out. Here he makes his servant (Gehazi) and all his descendants lepers forever. 5:27
# A dead body is brought to life when it accidentally touches the bones of Elisha. 13:21
# “So, king of Egypt”
There was no king of Egypt of the time named “So” or with any similar name. 17:4
# Take a lump of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered.” 20:7
# Isaiah, with a little help from God, makes the sun move backwards ten degrees. Now that’s quite a trick. All at once, the earth stopped spinning and then reversed its direction of rotation. Or maybe the sun traveled around the earth in those days! 20:11
1 Chronicles
# Some creationists believe that this verse (and Gen.10:25) refers to continental drift, which, they say, began to occur during the days of Pelag (which means “division”), about 100 or so years after the flood. 1:19
# “The earth … shall be stable, that it be not moved.” It doesn’t spin on its axis or travel about the sun. 16:30
# According to this verse David’s army had 1,100,000 men from Israel and 470,000 men from Judah, Of course, this numbers is ridiculously high for a battle between two tribal armies in 1000 BCE. (The United States had about 1.37 million active duty soldiers in 2001.) 21:5 David provides Solomon with a fantastically large amount of gold and silver with which to build the temple: 100,000 talents of gold and 1,000,000 talents of silver. Since a talent was about 60 pounds, this would be about 3,000 tons of gold and 30,000 tons of silver. 22:14
# King David collects ten thousand drams (or darics) for the construction of the temple in Jerusalem. This is especially interesting since darics were coins named after King Darius I who lived some five hundred years after David. 29:7
# As usual, the reported amounts of gold, silver, and iron are grossly exaggerated. (5000 talents of gold, for example, would be about 150,000 kilograms, which would be worth about 4.2 billion US dollars in today’s market.) 29:7
2 Chronicles
# Since the molten sea was round with a diameter of ten cubits and a circumference of thirty cubits, we know that the biblical value of p is 3. (The actual value is approximately 3.14159.) 4:2
# Abijah spoke to 1,200,000 soldiers at one time. (He had a really loud voice.) 13:3-4
# 500,000 soldiers die in a single God-assisted slaughter. 13:16-17
# In the largest single God-assisted massacre in the bible, Asa, with God’s help, kills one million Ethiopians. 14:8-14
# Asa, when he had a foot disease, went to physicians instead of seeking the Lord. (God disapproves of those who seek medical help rather than “seeking the Lord.”) 16:12
# God makes Uzziah a leper for burning incense without a license. 26:19-21
Ezra
# In the house of the rolls … in Babylon” This is the only library building mentioned in the Bible. The author mistakenly thought that Media was a part of Babylon. 6:1-2
Nehemiah (None)
Esther
# “Haman thought in his heart.” Most people think with their heads, but biblical folks think with their hearts. 6:6
Job
# The earth rests upon pillars and doesn’t move (unless God gets angry or something). 9:6
# “Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not.”
The earth is fixed and the sun travels about it. 9:7
# “The measure thereof is longer than the earth.”
(What is the length of a sphere?) 11:9
# Heaven is set upon pillars that tremble when God gets mad. 26:11
# “By the breath of God frost is given.” 37:10
# The earth is set on foundations and it does not move. 38:4-6
# “That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it.”
God could (if he wanted to) pick up the earth by its ends and shake all the wicked people off of it.
38:13
# God has snow and hail all stored up to use later “in time of trouble. 38:22
# God spread out the sky, which is a solid structure, hard and strong like a mirror. 37:18
# Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion?”
God seems pleased to have created prey for lions and ravens to eat. 38:39-41
# Ostriches are not cruel and stupid birds who abandon their eggs to die after laying them, as these verses imply. They are, in fact, careful and attentive parents. The male scoops out a hollow for the eggs, which are incubated by the female during the day and the male at night. After the eggs are hatched, they are cared for by the mother for over a month, at which time the chicks can keep up with running adults. 39:13-16
# The bible is wrong about ostriches being cruel and inattentive parents (39:13-16). But if they were, whose fault would it be? Why would God deprive them of the tools that are needed to do the job right? 39:17
# “The eagle … seeketh the prey…. Her young ones suck up blood.”
God is pleased with the way that predators kill and devour their prey. 39:27-30
# Bible believers have identified the behemoth as a hippopotamus, dinosaur, wildebeest, or crocodile. But my favorite is the way these verses are translated by Stephen Mitchell: “Look now: the Beast that I made: he eats grass like a bull. Look: the power in his thighs, the pulsing sinews of his belly. His penis stiffens like a pine; his testicles bulge with vigor.” 40:15-16
# “Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord?” 41:1-34
# “His [the leviathan's] teeth are terrible round about.”
God has equipped predators with teeth that tear the flesh of their prey. 41:14
Psalms
# “The righteous God trieth the hearts and reins.”
Jesus will search your kidneys 7:9
# “My reins also instruct me in the night seasons.”
Jesus will search your kidneys 16:7
# The earth shakes whenever God really gets mad. 18:7
# “The foundations of the world were discovered … at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.” (The earth is set on firm foundations and does not move — unless God blows his nose.) 18:15
# The sun moves around the earth. 19:4-6
Religion is a disease of the mind. Inoculate against it with reason
December 23rd, 2009 at 4:11 am
iki gambare setan
ojo ditiru
wong gendeng kengangguren cekelane internet
pikirmu lucu ta
pikirmu gawe guyu
tangisono nasibmu dol
sesuk yen kowe mati
kowe ketemu sapa
kowe ora biso mlayu meneh
alam maut duweke Yesus
mandega olehmu ngoceh seng marakno wong sak donya murtad lan ngujat Yesus
kowe ora ngerti sapa sing mbok ilokakakke
cilaka kowe wong gendeng
saraf, miring,loro uteke
ojo bangga yen diguyu
ojo seneng yen bojomu ayu
kuwi mung illusi
kuwi mung bayangan
diluk ngkas muspra
awakmu sirna
kecemplung nraka
December 24th, 2009 at 9:58 am
yoko ono
wong gendering kakalakawaka celophane internets
kow bono yeshush
aka aka
waka waka
greek to you too
January 20th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
OMG these jokes are soooo lame! who came up with these..Its like little kids drew them and thought it was funny…It would be..but this is lame come up with some better stuff!
Its like bad reality tv funny….NOT! Dont any of you guys try making a living off of this..AMATURES*
March 8th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
It’s not actually my practice to post comments, but I thought I would say that this was outstanding.
-G
Free Energy for Your Home
March 9th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Actually practice my posts. I thought I would.